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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



IBp 2Dt)eoDore 2D* hunger* 



ON THE THRESHOLD. Lectures to Young People. 

i6mo, $1.00. 
THE FREEDOM 'OF FAITH. Sermons. i6mo,$i.so. 
LAMPS AND PATHS Sermons to Children. New 

Edition. i6mo, $1.00. 
THE APPEAL TO LIFE. Sermons. i6mo, $1.50. 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 

Boston and New York. 



THE APPEAL TO LIFE 



BY 



/ 



THEODORE T. MUNGER 

AUTHOR OF "THE FREEDOM OF FAITH 



Who lifts his thought to God will never sink 
Far 'neath the level of what he dares to think 

Goethe 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 






e>3 



*$> 



Copyright, 1887, 
By THEODORE T. MUNGER. 

All rights reserved. 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge : 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houghton & Co. 



TO 

THE MEMORY OF TWO FRIENDS, 

ELIZABETH DUNCAN MUNGER 

AND 

ELISHA MULFORD, 

ONE THE DEAREST AND IN THE DEAREST RELATION; 

THE OTHER THE FRIEND OF MY MIND AS WELL, AS MY HEART. 

BOTH HAVE PASSED ON, 

SINCE THESE PAGES WERE BEGUN, 

INTO THE PRESENCE OF HIM WHOM THEY SERVED AND LOVED 

WHILE THEY WERE UPON THE EARTH. 



& 



% 



PEEFACE. 



The title of this volume indicates its purpose to 
set forth the truths to which it refers in the direct 
light of human life and common experience. 

The pulpit is now nearly the only field of thought 
and instruction not dominated by the inductive 
method. It is natural that such should be the case, 
because the fact of an authoritative revelation has 
been regarded as obviating the necessity of a close 
scrutiny and analysis of the facts among which it 
has play. But the prevalent and growing concep- 
tion of God as immanent in the world and in hu- 
man life sends us to these fields for the vindication 
and illustration of the revelation, so that the pulpit 
is slowly becoming aware that it must think in har- 
mony with other departments of thought and study. 
The advantage of this is evident, for men cannot 
have two equally authoritative methods of thought ; 
and it is not well to invite them to think in one way 
on Sunday and in another way on week-days : the 
method that prevails for the most will prevail 



VI PREFACE. 

throughout, and effort to induce another will not 
only work at cross purpose but result in unreality 
and failure. 

There are three general ways in which the Gospel 
is presented : the dogmatic way, which interprets the 
revelation through credal forms accepted as full and 
ultimate ; a simple repetition of the single revela- 
tion contained in the Bible without the inter-relation 
of its truths, and with an implication of faith that 
deprecates thought and requires only arbitrary ac- 
ceptance ; and a third way that may be called the 
vital ivay, — that is, truth set in the light of daily 
life and the real processes of human society. It is 
not averse to dogma; it accepts with docility the 
revelation, but it seeks for the vindication and illus- 
tration of the truth in the actual life of the world, 
on the ground that the revelation is through and in 
this life. It is, in brief, the inductive method. 

The first two methods are in violent contrast, yet 
are largely used in the same pulpits. The acceptance 
of a series of dogmas saturated with the metaphysic 
of the age in which they were formulated, and simply 
buttressed by texts selected in an uncritical day, is 
the absolute reverse of the simple text-reading and 
text-matching now so common ; but the two methods 
are often united, — induced perhaps by an uncon- 
scious feeling that the weakness of one supplements 



PREFACE. Vll 

that of the other. When persecuted in the city of 
dogma, the preacher flies into the village of texts, 
and so back and forth from fortress to open country. 
But two faulty methods do not make a sound one. 

These two methods are entrenched in sentiments 
that are not only to be respected but maintained. 
Dogma grows out of thought, and is the result of an 
instinctive demand for order and consistency. Man 
is a scientific being, and he cannot easily resist or 
limit his disposition to formulate knowledge and de- 
fine its principle. Perhaps he has no higher critical 
service to perform than to decide where to cease for- 
mulating, and when to refrain from pushing theories 
beyond the bounds of knowledge. 

The other sentiment is even more to be respected, 
— the reverent and docile respect for divine revela- 
tion. Of this there cannot be too much, but it can 
be infused with intelligence and made an ally instead 
of a supplanter of thought, as is so often the case. 

The third method does not reject dogma, but re- 
gards it as subservient, — subject to growth, to in- 
crease of knowledge, as always incomplete, as liable 
at any time to be justly set aside, and at all times to 
be held subordinate to the universal laws of human- 
ity. Nor does it regard with indifference the docile, 
child-like acceptance of the revealed "Word, but it 
does not forget that a temper of mind is not to be 



Vlll PREFACE. 

confounded with an exercise of thought, and that to 
be like a child is not to cease to be a man. To know 
and match texts and so infer a truth, may seem 
docile and reverent, but it has its analogy in the 
childish task of arranging the parts of a dissected 
map and so discovering a country, — a good method 
until another is grown to. 

The method we advocate will entertain dogma ; it 
does not hesitate to generalize truth, but it insists 
that the generalization shall be an induction from 
the whole revelation of God, and chiefly from the 
revelation in humanity regarded as inclusive of the 
Christ. It holds to this because it believes that 
the Word came by inspiration through humanity 
and by the processes of human life and the actual 
life of its Head. The interpretation of the Word 
must be according to its method. Hence it searches 
and reads life as it goes on in the world, in his- 
tory, in the family, and in the nation. The truth 
it finds here, it finds to be the revealed Word of 
God. When so discovered, it is felt to be truth; it 
takes on reality, and is full of commanding power. 
The thing that man is always requiring is that he 
shall be explained to himself : tell me what life 
means, show God to me in human life and I will 
believe on him. The Incarnation is the answer to 
this instinctive demand. Christ is God explaining 



PREFACE. IX 

man, interpreting life, revealing its history and des- 
tiny. Hence he is not only in human life, but he 
teaches in no other way than by its processes. His 
actual life is the teaching, and his words are only 
comments upon it ; the words are not the teaching. 

The reason Christ was said to speak with authority 
was that he avoided the traditional and common 
method of rehearsing the mere words of the law and 
the prophets and the formulated opinions of eminent 
teachers, and made an independent and direct appeal 
to the minds of his hearers. He did so, indeed, on 
his own responsibility and so as by authority, but 
the effectiveness of his teaching lay in the fact that 
it put itself in immediate connection with the moral 
and spiritual nature of man. The traditional, the 
dogmatic, the formal were set aside, and his Word 
was laid close to the human heart — mind to mind 
and nothing between. What Christ knew as abso- 
lute truth, man is capable of knowing as such when 
it is heard. Indeed, Christ's direct, intuitive knowl- 
edge of it is the pledge of man's ability to receive 
it in the same way and with something of the same 
sense of reality. Christ did not rely upon the ori- 
gin of truth for its effect, nor upon his divine com- 
mission, but upon the fitness of the truth to lay 
direct and powerful hold upon the nature of man. 
His words were given him of the Father, and he was 



X PREFACE. 

sent from the Father to utter them, but their final 
efficiency consisted in the absolute appeal they made 
to man's moral nature ; there and so acting, they 
became divine truth and able to save. His method, 
therefore, was the reverse of the dogmatic, and also 
of what may be termed the implicit acceptance of the 
revealed Word, — believed simply because it is re- 
vealed. Truth is not actually truth until it gets 
past the respect properly entertained for dogma, and 
beyond reverence for an external revelation, and 
awakens an intelligent and responsive consciousness 
of its reality ; it does not actually reach the man 
until then, and all previous action is unreal or merely 
disciplinary, useful indeed, but partial and without 
full spiritual power. Hence Christ, in his teaching, 
strove to start into action all the native sentiments 
and instincts in which human nature is grounded, 
casting himself in absolute confidence upon the fact 
that because men are the children of God they are 
ready each one for himself to hear his Word. Hence 
he approached them directly and through their ex- 
periences and occupations and the things they best 
knew, because that was the shortest path to these 
sentiments and instincts. If he can interpret a 
shepherd to himself as he seeks a lost sheep, he can 
easily make him understand God seeking lost men ; 
the truth of God immediately allies itself with the 
truth of the shepherd. 



PREFACE. XI 

These distinctions may seem slight but they are 
fundamental. They enter into and underlie the 
later and better habits of thoughts which are now 
finding expression in many pulpits. If we do not 
find the illustration and vindication of the Faith in 
the heart and life of humanity, we shall find it 
nowhere. If we can interpret the human heart as it 
feels and hopes and strives in the natural relations 
of life ; if we can measure the play of the human 
mind in the family, in society, and in the nation, — 
we shall find both the field of the Gospel and its vin- 
dication. The thing to be done at present is not to 
crowd upon men a system conceived in some way to 
be true, nor fco bind them down to a hard, literal, 
undiscerning reception of texts, but to set forth the 
identity of the Faith with the action of man's 
nature in the natural relations of life ; to show that 
the truth of God is also the truth of man. This is 
the central meaning of the Incarnation, and preach- 
ing should be the exposition of it. 

The first ten sermons in this volume are efforts in 
this direction, offered with a painful sense of their 
failure to meet the ideal purpose. 

I hardly need to say that the last four discourses 
were not written to be preached, yet are included as 
not out of unity with those before them, but more 
specially to meet the needs of a vast number who are 



Xll PREFACE. 

asking if they can think under the principle of evo- 
lution and also as Christian believers. The necessity 
of showing the possibility of this is my only reason 
for including them, with the hope that they may be 
the precursors of far better efforts by others in the 
same direction, — the most imperative work now 
pressing upon religious teachers who are able to dis- 
cern the signs of the times, and who would serve 
their day and generation. 



CONTENTS. 



The Witness from Experience . . . . . .1 

Christ's Treatment of Unwilling Skeptics . . 25 

Truth through and by Life 45 

Life not Vanity . 65 

The Gospel of the Body 85 

The Defeat of Life 107 

The Two Prayers of Job 127 

Trust and Righteousness 147 

The Twofold Force in Salvation 167 

Faith Essential Righteousness 185 

Evolution and the Faith 207 

Immortality and Modern Thought .... 245 

Man the Final Form in Creation 281 

Music as Revelation 307 



THE WITNESS FROM EXPERIENCE. 



' ' Christianity is not a theory or a speculation, but a life ; — not 
a philosophy of life, but a life and a living process." — Cole- 
ridge. 

" The Christian religion is a mighty lever, by the help of which 
degraded and suffering humanity has again and again been 
strengthened to lift itself out of the mire ; and by allowing it the 
possession of this great moral efficiency, we place it on a platform 
higher than all philosophy, and where, indeed, for the manifesta- 
tion of its highest virtue no philosophy is required." — Goethe. 



THE WITNESS FROM EXPERIENCE. 



Then drew near unto him all the publicans and sinners for to hear 
him, etc. — St. Luke xv. 1-11. 

If we had been present when these parables were 
spoken, we should have witnessed at least a scene 
of keen intellectual interest. For, first of all, these 
parables are an intellectual combat, an answer to 
criticism, and the answer has all the robust force 
that any great logician would throw into his argu- 
ment. There is nothing mystical, nothing rhap- 
sodical, nothing sentimental, nothing outside the 
ordinary experience of men. On the contrary, these 
parables get their force because they rest so squarely 
and broadly on the every-day feelings and experi- 
ences of ordinary men. They are apologetic and 
they are didactic ; that is, they are a personal de- 
fense by Christ of himself and his work, and they 
also enforce great truths of duty. They are local 
and they are universal ; that is, they met the criti- 
cism of the hour, and they also teach universal les- 
sons of pity and helpfulness, and link the lowly duty 
of earth with the joy of the heavenly order. 

The scene must have had a thrilling interest to 
one capable of appreciating how a great spirit meets 
his opponents. A crowd of publicans flock about 



4 THE WITNESS FROM EXPERIENCE. 

Christ, tax-gatherers, some of whom may be honest at 
heart, and capable of becoming good men under better 
circumstances, for no class of men is wholly bad ; 
there will be many exceptions and many more with 
redeeming qualities. Other sinners also are about 
him : slaves of vice, good-for-nothings in the com- 
mon estimate ; men and women who wear the brand 
of evil without protest, but not therefore hopeless 
in the discerning judgment of Heaven, for this class 
are quite as much victims of an imperfect social 
system as originators of sin. If the body of society 
is not pure and well composed, there will be a sedi- 
ment and a scum ; and the fault is not in any one 
part, but in the whole mass. Imperfect human 
society is always precipitating its faults, mistakes, 
ignorance, injustice, and greed, and the result is the 
degradation, brutality, and gross vice of the lower 
classes, and the follies, corruption, and hard selfish- 
ness of the rich, — the extremes meeting and min- 
gling into one in the discerning eye of the all-seeing 
Judge. Christ felt the force of these excuses, and 
saw the redeeming, or rather redeemable, qualities 
that lay beneath this outer crust of repelling wick- 
edness. Hence he did not repulse this crowd when 
it flocked about him, drawn simply because he did 
not repel, but had dropped some kind word which 
their outcast hearts had caught at by unquenchable 
instinct. They were drawn also by something 
stronger than a chance word. If the main charac- 
teristic of Christ were reduced to one phrase, it 
would be, — a passion for saving the lost. He is 
indeed a shepherd leading his whole flock in green 



THE WITNESS FROM EXPERIENCE. 5 

pastures and by still waters ; lie guides the whole 
family of man in right ways, and feeds society with 
the bread of life, and lights every man born into 
the world on the path to eternal life ; but when any 
class or any man gets lost, — lost to God and to 
humanity and to himself, — then the passion of his 
nature is aroused ; then the flame of his love bursts 
out ; then the wrath of the Son of Man is kindled 
against the evil that can so blast a fellow-man ; then 
the Lamb of God is ready to die to save a brother- 
man who is lost. When one indulges a passion like 
this, the objects of it are not long in finding it out. 
Let him raise his standard anywhere, and they will 
flock to it, for there are affinities not only of likes 
but of opposites ; needs as well as desires draw men, 
and the instinct of the soul for what is highest and 
strongest and best never wholly dies out. 

There are also hovering about him another class : 
Pharisees and Scribes, critics with notions of their 
own in regard to all things in earth and heaven, 
professional theologians and sociologists, theorists 
who have sunk man in disquisitions about man, and 
religion in schemes of religion ; who have spec- 
ulated and refined upon religion until they have lost 
sight of its great universal features, and so, at last, 
have even reversed it, turning its mercy and love 
and deliverance into mere forms of observance and 
ritual, straining out gnats of heresy and swallowing 
camels of broken eternal law, — a process that 
finally transforms them so that they become cold 
and bloodless haters and despisers of their fellow- 
men. And yet they were very respectable men : 



6 THE WITNESS FROM EXPERIENCE. 

they sat in Moses's seat, and discussed their theology 
under the name of " the Law " day after day ; they 
published in their way defenses of what they deemed 
the historic faith, and kept a close, rebuking eye 
upon any who differed from them. These men were 
about Christ, for this Christ is quoting Moses and 
telling the people what the Law actually means. 
They do not ask, " Does he quote Moses fairly ; 
does he describe the faith as it is ? " but, " Does 
he agree with us ; is he in accord with present be- 
lief?" 

Now it did not fall in with Christ's method to 
pass by these men in silence, uttering simply his 
own views, and suffering theirs to pass unchallenged. 
For when a false teacher is entrenched in long- 
cherished religious traditions and wears a garb of 
outward sanctity, his influence over the common 
people is well-nigh irresistible, and it needs to be 
broken up not only by the counter, positive truth, 
but by an exposure of the false grounds on which it 
rests. These parables, therefore, are an attack as 
well as a teaching ; they are a defense as well as a 
message. Still, there is no personal hate in them ; 
perhaps some of these Pharisees themselves will feel 
their force. His words flame with divine indigna- 
tion, but it is the still heat of a sun ; his emotions 
are deep, but their expression is like the wheels in 
Dante's vision, that seemed to sleep on their axles 
from the very swiftness of their turning. These 
critics who are complaining around Christ are guilty 
of the one deadly sin, — inhumanity ; they have 
reversed the law of human society, and have come 



THE WITNESS FROM EXPERIENCE. 7 

to hate a man because he is wicked, and to despise 
him because he is low. This is contrary to Moses, 
but Christ does not quote Moses, for they have 
turned his words into a creed of their own that 
reads quite differently ; nor does he now affirm on 
his own authority. Christ indeed so spoke, but it 
was not an authority that shut out all use of reason, 
that ignored the motions of the human heart and 
the every-day thought of men ; his authority was 
grounded in these, and it got its force from his 
absolute knowledge of these things, and not from 
the far-off secrets of some distant heaven. His 
authority lay in his absolute exposure of the human 
heart to itself and a like revelation of God's heart. 
He appeals instead to the daily experience of the 
people about them, to the way in which shepherds 
and housewives and fathers everywhere acted and 
felt. The argument from every-day life and natural 
feeling is irresistible. Show a man that his theory, 
however fine and otherwise well supported, does not 
tally with the common thought and instinctive habits 
and feelings of men, and he is silenced ; nature can- 
not be pitched out with any sort of a theoretical or 
argumentative fork. 

And so we have three parables saying nearly the 
same thing, all turning on something lost, one piled 
on another without reason except to overwhelm his 
critics under an accumulation of every-day truth. 
The commentators find a variety of thoughts in 
them ; there is instead one thought intensified by 
repetition. You accuse me of taking an interest in 
lost men, of eating and drinking with them ; you 



8 THE WITNESS FROM EXPERIENCE. 

deem me fanatical because I love them ; you take 
satisfaction in thanking God that you are not as 
these publicans ; I find joy in saving them. They 
are indeed lost, but what do men do, how do they 
feel, when they have lost anything, no matter how 
small its value may be? Take one of your own 
shepherds : he has a hundred sheep — a large flock, 
but one gets lost, wanders away in its silly fash- 
ion, tears its fleece and leaves it on the thorns, 
grows hungry and lean in the rocky defiles, gets 
wild and unlike itself in its strange and danger- 
haunted life, a lost and nearly valueless sheep, hard 
to find and of small worth when found, but it is lost, 
— what does the shepherd do in such a case ? Does 
he not leave the flock, perhaps neglect it somewhat, 
turn it over to some one else, and go after the one 
that is lost, and seek for it till he finds it ? Do not 
all the habits and instincts of a shepherd lead him to 
do this ? And how is it with housewives in their 
dark cottages when they have lost a piece of money ? 
Do they not light a lamp and sweep the house in all 
its four corners, till they find it? And how is it 
with fathers whose sons stray away into the evil 
world, and waste their property in debauchery, and 
come to shame and wretchedness, like these sinners 
about us ? Do they not wait and hope and pray that 
they may come to themselves and at last return ? And 
when that happens, do not the fathers, would not you 
if you are still human, rejoice, and receive them with 
open arms and feasting ? Now I tell you that I am 
not acting in any unusual or unnatural way. I am 
merely doing what any person does who properly 



THE WITNESS FROM EXPERIENCE. 9 

fulfills a true relation ; what any shepherd worthy of 
the name, any prudent housewife, any real father, 
would do, when they have lost sheep, or money, or 
sons. I have human nature on my side ; I stand 
with those who fill their places in the e very-day work 
of the world, and who act out of unperverted natu- 
ral instinct. If you criticise me, you criticise habits 
that all men approve ; you array yourselves against 
the natural emotions that everyday sweep through 
the hearts of all these people ; you deny the reality 
of the strongest affection of the human heart, — a 
father's love for his son. I told you long ago that 
I am a physician striving to heal the sick ; now I tell 
you that I am a shepherd seeking the lost sheep of 
our common nation ; and in fulfilling these relations 
I am led by the same motives that actuate every-day 
people in the every-day occupations of life. 

As an answer, nothing could be more conclusive 
or more crushing. There was not a shepherd who 
had that day strayed down from the hills, not a 
housewife who had stolen a moment from her cares 
to hear the words of this new prophet, not a father 
who had grieved over a wayward son, not a man or 
woman who had ever lost anything and found it, but 
triumphed in the argument that had its vindication 
in their own bosoms. 

And here, my friends, is where all the words of 
Christ are proved true. It is here, in the daily ex- 
perience of honest occupations, in the emotions that 
rise out of the common events of life, in the history 
of the human heart as it loses and finds, that the 
Gospel has its confirmation. For the Gospel has 



10 THE WITNESS FROM EXPERIENCE. 

no method peculiar to itself ; it is not an alien in 
the world of thought ; it is not the secret of some 
new order suddenly revealed. Its method is that 
of human nature, which is also the divine nature ; 
the Son of God is also the Son of Man ; in his 
own image made he man ; the love of God is 
not different from the love of man, and the justice 
of God is not unlike that which springs instinc- 
tive out of the hearts of all men. The action of 
reason in his mind is the same as that by which we 
guide ourselves, for we are his image ; it is absolute, 
but the absolute is not essentially different from the 
relative. The gravitation that governs a pebble 
thrown into the air is the same force that guides 
Arcturus, and makes fast the bands of Orion, and 
binds together in sweet influence the whole universe 
of worlds. The fires that glow on our hearths and 
the flames that mingle in our laboratories are the 
same that leap from the face of the most distant sun. 
The universe is a unit, perhaps an essence ; and 
as the thought of God impregnates in all material 
things, so is it wrought into all minds, — all set to 
laws of righteousness, all keyed to the same emo- 
tions, all centrally grounded in eternal love that is 
eternal joy. The limitation and defect and perver- 
sion of these constitute evil, but back of the evil 
and in spite of it is the common current of thought 
and feeling that issues from the mind of God and 
sweeps through humanity. The shepherd seeking 
a lost sheep is God saving a world. A woman re- 
joicing over her found money is the joy of God and 
angels over repenting sinners. Anthropomorphism 



THE WITNESS FROM EXPERIENCE. 11 

has been regarded as the product of a simple and 
superstitious age, but we are coming back — led by 
philosophy on one side and by science on the other 
— to something like this same old conception ; for 
there is no better conception of God than as a Being 
who contains within himself an eternal humanity. 
We are finding out that we cannot otherwise escape 
dualism, nor have a cosmos in the material world 
and a revelation in the moral world. For a revela- 
tion must have its basis and its method in a common 
nature and in common processes of thought and feel- 
ing ; otherwise there are no avenues and no recep- 
tivity. Thus we know the revelation and determine 
its reality, not by signs wrought, but by its accord 
with the general laws of our being and the instinc- 
tive feelings of our nature as they come out in the 
natural relations of life. We do not thus set our- 
selves over a revelation to determine it, but we put it 
beside human nature to see if it tallies with it, if it 
says the same thing, if the molten metal of inspired 
truth fills the human mould, if the deep without calls 
to the deep within and is keyed to the same eternal 
note. Still, call it a test if you will ; the human 
mind, in its brave, early day, did not hesitate to 
claim that God doubled his oath before doubting 
men, that they might have a sure and steadfast 
anchor of the soul. There is no dishonor in under- 
going a test. " Believe me for my works," says the 
Christ. Or, if there were a humbling of himself in 
it, it is that humility which is itself glory; God 
stoops to get on the level of our doubting, question- 
ing hearts, — hearts that must question and doubt 



12 THE WITNESS FROM EXPERIENCE. 

because we have not yet come to the world where 
there is no night. The shadows are almost as heavy 
as the substance, and there are many voices around 
and within us crying Lo here ! and Lo there ! But 
when the glowing metal of revealed truth finds its 
way into every crevice of the human mould, then we 
know the one was made for the other. When God's 
voice starts into vibration every string of my nature, 
then I know it is God's voice. And so Christ laid 
his finger on the hearts about him, — the shepherds, 
the housewives, the fathers, men who sowed and 
reaped, and toiled in vineyards, and fished in waters, 
and made feasts, and attended weddings, and showed 
them that his truth was their truth. Revelation is 
not a set of orders issued as by a captain or pilot on 
the deck of a ship : it is the Spirit taking the things 
of Christ and showing them unto us ; it is the 
appeal of the divine mind to the human on the basis 
that one is the image of the other. 

But apology and defense are a small part of 
Christ's aim in the parable. It is true that the 
Pharisee, like the poor, is always with us ; he stands, 
not for a temporary class, but for a spirit that is al- 
ways springing out of human selfishness when fed 
by prosperity and endowed with power. The Phar- 
isee of Christ's day was a religious bigot, but the 
thing in him that stirred the Christly wrath was his 
inhumanity, beside which bigotry is a simple thing. 
The Pharisee of to-day is the Sadducee who believes 
neither in angel nor spirit, but only in a force that 
helps the strong and destroys the weak ; he is the 
pessimist who finds no good or hope of good in the 



THE WITNESS FROM EXPERIENCE. 13 

world, and so eats and drinks till to-morrow lights 
him to dusty death ; he is the monopolist who fills 
his barns while God's poor starve ; he is the rich man 
who will not touch with one of his fingers the bur- 
dens of vice and ignorance and poverty that rest on 
his fellow-man ; he is the prudent, calculating, per- 
sistent builder-up of his own fortune in ways exter- 
nally fair, but lets every other man go his own way, 
helps no public enterprise, takes part in no work 
that does not contribute to his gains ; he is the man 
of cold blood and narrow vision and hard sense, a 
quoter of prudential maxims, one who believes that 
the sunlight and the dew and the rain are for the 
just, and not also for the unjust. And the Scribes 
are also with us : men who propound the opinions 
and habits of the modern Pharisee as theories and 
write them out in books, laissez-faire economists ; 
naturalists and sociologists who describe a section of 
the world and call it a philosophy of the universe ; 
positivists who, by denying the eternal and slighting 
the moral, drive men back into the cave of present 
self-interest; and lecturers who overlook brothels 
to sneer at churches. Yes, the Pharisee and the 
Scribe are with us still, and their loud murmuring is 
not to be passed by. It is well to show them that 
they contradict the instincts of the human heart and 
the principles that spontaneously direct men in the 
natural relations of human life. Still, this is a 
small part of the work of a teacher of men. The 
bread of life is positive; the thing that is, is the 
truth that feeds and nerves and inspires. It is be- 
cause Christ was so immensely and overwhelmingly 



14 THE WITNESS FROM EXPERIENCE. 

positive that he could afford at times to turn on 
his critics, and hurl at them the denial of our 
common nature. But your denier, your man with 
only a negative proposition, whether he stand alone 
or within a church, denying the Trinity, denying 
future punishment, denying the validity of the sac- 
raments, — such a teacher finds himself surrounded 
by a lean and hungry flock that may, for a time, 
look up expecting to be fed, but at last fall away, 
some straying back into pasture and others into the 
wilderness. He who gives himself up to denials 
and negations reduces himself to their level, and be- 
comes himself a negation, a silence when men are 
calling for a voice, a darkness when they are crying 
for a light. It matters little whether the thing de- 
nied be true or false ; denial is not what we want. 
We are all in error more or less ; we know it well 
enough. We are groping in a dimly-lighted world, 
grasping at substance and finding it shadow, casting 
ourselves upon shadows to find that we have dashed 
our heads against substance ; what we most want is 
light. And so this parable mainly has for its end 
to show that the saving of lost men belongs properly 
to the business of the world, and is a main concern 
with it ; that it is justified by the common thought 
of men, and that it is linked with those economic 
and moral instincts that form the basis of social 
life. ^The Scribes may not understand me, but the 
shepherds do. 

Now let us look more closely into the principle 
that Christ puts under his passion for saving lost 
men. 



THE WITNESS FROM EXPERIENCE. 15 

He does not by any means say that any faithful 
shepherd, any prudent housewife, will take an inter- 
est in lost men, but only that the principle at the 
bottom of their conduct and emotions are similar, 
like forces and currents in our common nature. 
This principle is the peculiar joy we feel in find- 
ing things lost. To get possession of a thing we 
never had yields a certain satisfaction, but to regain 
a thing lost stirs a deeper and keener feeling. To 
lose a thing, of however small value and in whatever 
way, vexes us ; we reflect on ourselves with shame 
and blame, and we strive harder to find it than to 
secure something else of more worth. Not another 
sheep, but the one lost, not earning another coin, 
but finding the identical one I lost : in this we have 
the voice of a sound and hearty nature. Such a 
search piques the curiosity, — a sport in childhood 
and a purpose throughout life. To find a hidden 
thing is the mind matching itself against nature ; to 
find a lost thing is the triumph of mind over nature 
when it has eluded us. It involves also the con- 
science ; we feel responsible for that which is our 
own, or rather is not our own, but is entrusted to us, 
and for that very reason to be accounted for at some 
bar. You say ; I may do what I choose with mine 
own, — drop this coin into the sea. You might if it 
were your own, but because it is not absolutely yours 
you may not cast it away. It is the instinctive sense 
of stewardship that sets us to searching for what we 
have lost ; it must be accounted for at the bar of 
conscience, which is also the bar of God. To lightly 
lose a thing, and care lightly for the loss, argues a 



16 THE WITNESS FROM EXPERIENCE. 

shallow and immoral nature. He who heedlessly 
parts with anything that truly belongs to him does 
not hold himself at true value, but is a loose-girded, 
ill-containing being who wastes at last the very ele- 
ments of his selfhood. It is such a principle that 
lies back of Christ's passion, deep seated in human 
nature and in the divine nature. But he carries it 
much farther. In his quest for lost men, he is search- 
ing not only for a value lost out of the riches of the 
Father, not simply to keep the flock whole, but to 
restore to the lost man himself the riches he has 
wasted. For a lost man is chiefly lost to himself. 
It is not possible for those to suffer so much from 
the wandering away of one dear to them into sin as 
the one himself. For awhile the father suffers more 
than his prodigal boy, but time and use dull the 
pangs of one and sharpen those of the other. Here 
is where Christ's work of saving lost men rises above 
the analogies of instinctive nature and habit, and 
enters the world of morals. It is his love for man, 
his pity for the misery of a man lost, his sense of 
the wrong when a man throws himself away, his per- 
fect sense of the joy wasted, and his even keener 
sense of the ever-deepening wretchedness of an evil- 
doer; his sympathy, so perfect that he feels the 
full measure of what another feels, and so bears on 
his own heart all the woe of humanity, and treats as 
his own all this poverty and hunger of sin, — here is 
the spring of Christ's passion for saving lost men. 

The parable turns in its last analysis upon the 
union of consciousness which exists between a true 
shepherd and his sheep. By living with his flock in 



THE WITNESS FROM EXPERIENCE. 17 

the long intimacy of years and by constant care, he 
passes the wide boundary of their diverse natures 
and comes to know how a sheep feels ; he not only 
loves but he understands it ; and when it is lost his 
shepherd's heart goes after it in its strange loneli- 
ness, pities its fear as it hears the howl of the wolf, 
feels the weariness of the poor creature as it wanders 
aimless over fell and moor, bleating for its compan- 
ions. Ah, tender and true picture of this poor 
world lost in evil and sought by its Shepherd! 
It is Christ's absolute consciousness of lost humanity 
that makes him its seeking Saviour. 

These are weighty lessons for us. It is the first 
duty of a man in the world to see things as they 
are ; it is the highest achievement of the intellect to 
rightly measure and weigh the condition of human- 
ity. We understand quite well the loss of a sheep, 
— a fleece of wool and a carcass of mutton. Money 
lost, — that is a common and bitter enough experi- 
ence. Waste, — there are enough to decry it : 
political economists running up and down the land 
telling us how to save here and gain there, how to 
get the greatest number of dollars into the largest 
number of pockets, — all of which is quite well. 
But how is it about lost men, wasted energies, facul- 
ties weakened by drink, minds sealed up in igno- 
rance, hearts vacant of joy, whole classes lost in vice, 
whole flocks scattered in the wilderness of evil, and 
no shepherd to pity and seek them? It is the 
strange thing in the world that man cares so little 
for man. Man is the only jewel ; there is no true 
gold but him on this planet. Why does man pass by 



18 THE WITNESS FROM EXPERIENCE. 

man and go after something that glitters, or stretches 
wide, or reaches high ? We cannot tell. It is not 
natural, it is contrary to nature, — a perversion, a 
blindness or dimness of yet unformed vision, the 
blunder and stumble of a race not yet come to the 
full exercise of its proper humanity. It is because 
Christ saw man at his true value and died to give 
expression to his estimate that we name him the 
Humanity itself ; he is man rightly weighing man. 
And so the struggle of Christ in history is to bring 
men up to the point of duly valuing their fellow- 
men. We have no debt but to love one another. 
There is no passion worthy of us but the passion for 
humanity. It has been a weary work to start this 
flame in the heart of the world. It was kindled in 
the fires of the death of the Son of Man ; it spread 
mightily so long as the breath of the Spirit had 
access to it, but government, and philosophy, and 
greed, and custom " heavy as frost, and deep almost 
as life," first embraced and then smothered it ; each 
added to it something of itself, and so it became a 
thing of authority and scholasticism and tradition, — 
its simple, natural humanity overborne and well- 
nigh lost to it. Now at last it seems to be emer- 
ging, and to be gaining recognition not only in the 
practical Christian conscience but in theology. And 
here indeed is a sea deep and wide enough to float 
whole bodies of divinity. It is a theology, a philos- 
ophy, a social science ; it is the secret of the order 
of the world. This passion for humanity, hindered 
as it has been, is still the only force that has ever 
done anything towards radically curing the wrongs 



THE WITNESS FROM EXPERIENCE. 19 

of the masses. It has nearly driven out the tyranny 
of king and class ; it has yet to harmonize the rela- 
tions between the poor and the rich, between the 
laborer and the employer, — a task in which it will 
be hindered by communism and socialism ; for while 
the Shepherd of humanity is seeking his lost sheep 
he encounters wolves in sheep's clothing. The 
greatest impediments to Christianity are those spo- 
radic forms of benevolence that seek similar ends, 
yet are without its spirit, its methods, and its wis- 
dom. But at last it will triumph over these, for the 
lost sheep will be sought till it is found. It will at 
last teach men that they are brethren. Slowly but 
surely this eternal truth is finding its way into so- 
ciety. This dear nation of ours is organized under 
this conception, — a land of equal laws. To reduce 
society in its social and economic relations to the 
same complexion is the task before it. The thought 
is becoming familiar to men, and is subduing all 
things — laws, customs, commerce, business — to its 
own temper. 

The parable, in its main drift, sends us each and 
all to the work of delivering the fallen and oppressed 
children of humanity. The whole need not a phy- 
sician ; they may be left to the orderly forces of 
nature and grace that enfold them ; they incite us 
to wise and prudent care, they do not stir us 
into a divine passion. But these poverty-stricken 
ones : the children that grow pale in tenement 
houses ; the victims of drink ; the women driven 
to vice by the cruelty of rapacious employers ; the 
multitudes who toil on railways, stripped bare of the 



20 THE WITNESS FROM EXPERIENCE. 

saving ties of home and social life ; the church] ess 
masses in the West, the unchurched masses in the 
East ; the illiterate of all sections ; the sinners, the 
touch of whose garments we shun as we walk the 
streets, — these are the lost sheep that we are to 
seek. 

It is not an easy task. Great passions move in 
an atmosphere of cost and suffering, but along with 
the suffering there is a joy. We do not sound the 
depth of this parable until we master this feature of 
it. It is significant that these parables end in joy, 
— social joy, for there is no other. Two main 
thoughts run through them : a suffering search for 
that which is lost, a recompensing joy when it is 
found. Christ is careful not to omit the latter. An 
immense amount of far-drawn and fanciful analogy is 
often associated with them that only hides the sense, 
and were better thrown aside. There are indeed 
some minor suggestions, incidental in their nature, 
that are of value, but the sole, central truth is that 
a man who has a proper feeling for humanity will 
seek after its lost, and when he has recovered a 
lost one he comes into joy. This is natural, — to be 
glad when the lost is found, — but Christ expands 
the field of its action, lifts it up to heaven, and calls 
in the angels. Whether this is the exulting play of 
the oriental imagination spiritualizing its visions 
and throwing into outward form the ecstasies of the 
inner soul, or a simple revelation of experiences in 
another world, it is not necessary to decide. For 
one, I do not care to make the distinction. It is 
not improbable that the heavenly fact is the basis of 



THE WITNESS FROM EXPERIENCE. 21 

the heavenly vision. But if the distinction were 
pressed, I would sooner stand with the heaven- 
seeing enthusiast than with the modern Sadducee. 
" Count me on the side of the angels." Better a 
noble faith than a narrow philosophy. Give us 
open but not empty heavens. Cease to deepen the 
skies with your lenses, if you cannot also by faith 
people them. Do not make man solitary in this 
wide universe by declaring that he alone dwells in 
it. Do not point us to a sad and sorrow-stricken 
world, and then break our hearts by the assertion 
that there is none better. You strive in vain when 
you tell us that this world of matter which upholds 
our feet upholds also our spirits. In vain you may 
tell us that there is a world for our senses, but no 
world for our thoughts, for our affections, for our 
spiritual instincts. To the clear eyes of the guile- 
less man the heavens are open, and he sees angels 
ascending and descending. Such a world enfolds 
and interpenetrates the visible world, — a spiritual 
yet a real world, present, at hand, without and 
within, seen not with eye, nor heard by ear, nor 
felt by touch, but more substantial and truer than 
that reported by the nerves ; for what the spirit says 
to itself must be more trustworthy than what is 
reported by its servants. 

The world of spirit, the world of God and angels, 
is the real world. Life comes from it and reaches 
up into it ; there life culminates ; there moral and 
spiritual processes have their consummation ; there 
God's pity yearns over his lost children ; there the 
angels rejoice when one returns. Now for the use 
of it. 



22 THE WITNESS FROM EXPERIENCE. 

You and I, my friends, find scant reward in this 
outward world for any pains and labors we undergo 
in striving to save lost men. It is not easy to con- 
tend against the selfishness of men, to strive for the 
reform of evils and abuses before it becomes popu- 
lar. It is not pleasant to see the ringer of the proud 
and the powerful pointed at you in scorn of what 
they call your fanaticism ; if you sympathize with 
labor, to be named a communist ; if you contend 
against bigotry, to be cast out as a heretic ; if you 
plead for ideals that are high and changes that are 
radical, to be styled a visionary. Nor is it pleasant 
to go down into the depths after lost men, to eat 
and drink with sinners. This close but necessary 
contact with evil is hard to endure, for the seeking 
shepherd shares largely in the lot of the lost sheep : 
if its fleece is torn, so are his garments ; if its 
flesh is bruised, so is he bruised for its silly in- 
iquities; if the blood of its life streams from 
wounds, so is his raiment stained as he lays it upon 
his shoulder ; if it has strayed away into dank and 
deadly places, he must breathe the fatal air. There 
is a great deal of good work to be done in the world 
that demands no sacrifice, and yields a sufficient re- 
ward in the gratitude of society ; but this special 
work of saving the peculiarly lost has no such re- 
ward. The passion for humanity is indulged at the 
cost of suffering, but it is not without its joy. " You 
eat with sinners," says the Pharisee. " True," says 
the Christ, " but there is a satisfaction in it beyond 
and above what you know, — the joy of heaven." 

That same heavenly joy flows round this world 



THE WITNESS FROM EXPERIENCE. 23 

still. When duty presses hard, when the faces of 
men are averted, when labor brings no visible re- 
ward, when conscience demands sacrifice, then fly- 
up into the heavenly world and drink the joy that 
God gives to those who serve him in these ways. 



CHRIST'S TREATMENT OF UNWILLING 
SKEPTICS. 



" There are few religious phrases that have had such a power of 
darkening men's minds as to their true relation to God, as the com- 
mon phrase that we are here in a state of probation, under trial, as 
it were. We are not in a state of probation ; we are in a process of 
education, directed by that eternal purpose of love which brought 
us into being. When we apprehend that we are in a process of ed- 
ucation that God will carry to its fulfillment, however long it may 
take, we feel that the loving purpose of the Father is over us, and 
that the events of life are not appointed as testing us, whether we 
will choose God or not, but real lessons into training us to make 
the right choice. ' ' — Thomas Erskine, Memoirs, p. 376. 

1 ' Whatever is against right reason, that no faith can oblige us to 
believe. For though reason is not the positive and affirmative 
measure of our faith, and our faith ought to be larger than reason, 
and take something into her heart that reason can never take into 
her eye, yet in all our creed there can be nothing against reason. 
If reason justly contradicts an article, it is not of the household of 
faith." — Jeremy Taylor. 

' ' Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life : 
Such a Way, as gives us breath ; 
Such a Truth, as ends all strife : 
Such a Life, as killeth death. 

" Come, my Light, my Feast, my Strength : 
Such a Light, as shows a feast : 
Such a Feast, as mends in length : 
Such a Strength, as makes his guest. 

" Come, my Joy, my Love, my Heart : 
Such a Joy, as none can move : 
Such a Love, as none can part : 
Such a Heart, as joyes in Love." 

George Herbert, The Call. 



UNWILLING SKEPTICS. 



And, behold, two of them were going that very day to a village 
named Emmaus, which was threescore furlongs from Jerusalem. 

And they said one to another, Was not our heart burning within 
us, while he spoke to us in the way, while he opened to us the 
scriptures ? — St. Luke xxiv. 13-32. 

I think no one can read this story carefully with- 
out seeing that it is an entirely truthful history down 
to its minutest particular. One part of it carries 
the other ; the philosophy of it confirms the incident, 
and the incident is necessary for holding the philos- 
ophy ; the two play into each other in so easy and 
natural a way that all suspicion of myth, or late tra- 
dition, or fabrication, is shut out. On any other 
theory than that of historical verity, the meaning 
would have escaped the form, or the form would not 
have retained the meaning. 

The incident might bear for a title, Christ's treat- 
ment of unwilling skeptics. He has not joined 
these two men merely to show them the fact of his 
resurrection, and so drive them into a belief of it 
by a physical process, but to convince them of it by 
a rational process. He is not with them to assure 



28 CHRIST'S TREATMENT OF UNWILLING SKEPTICS. 

them in any way of a bare fact, but to set that fact 
in all its wide relations and bearings. Hence, he 
hides himself from their recognition, — how, it is 
needless to ask ; whether through the shades of the 
far spent day, or in the preoccupation of their sad 
minds, or in the new form and features of one who 
has passed under the transforming touch of death 
and resurrection, it matters not. It is as man with 
man, mind with mind, that he meets them, and so 
leads them into the truth he would teach without 
aid from the prejudice of personal love or the over- 
whelming influence of enforced evidence. Why do 
not the heavens open and show us God? Why does 
not the earth speak and declare his name ? Why 
do not the gates of eternity swing open and disclose 
the hosts of the blessed dead ? Why does not Christ 
come and spread before us his pierced hands, and 
offer them to the touch of our unbelief ? 

Not in such ways is faith wrought. " Blessed are 
they that have not seen and yet have believed." A 
certain kind of faith may be so induced, but it is not 
a faith that blesses ; it is not a faith that roots itself 
in the according reason ; it is not a faith that rests 
on the whole order of eternal truth; it is not a 
faith that brings love and reverence and obedience 
to a conscious realization through patient exercise of 
them. For faith is not something to be given, but 
a result to be achieved by the combined action of 
the reason, the will, and the heart. And so Christ 
puts himself far off from these doubting men, and 
draws nigh to them by the close processes of reason 
before he lets himself in upon the love and wonder 



CHRIST'S TREATMENT OF UNWILLING SKEPTICS. 29 

of their hearts. Thus convinced, they will be per- 
suaded indeed. Seen thus in the light of history, 
they will surely know that he is the Lamb of God, 
slain from the foundation of the world. There was 
evidently in the mind of Christ a steady purpose to 
prepare the disciples for a large conception of him- 
self for their use in the future. He will not ask it 
now, while he is with them, but he drops into their 
minds seeds of revelation that will bear the fruit of 
a large and invincible faith. 

These two men on the way to Emmaus are in a 
state of mind not strange, nor without parallel in 
the present. They had a Christ, but they have him 
no longer. They had. hoped he would redeem Israel, 
but he was crucified, dead, and buried. Every con- 
ception of him they had held was thrown into con- 
fusion ; every hope they had won from him was 
blighted. The fair dream, woven of his power and 
goodness and spiritual energy, was dissolved. They 
were again but Galilean fishermen, with the old 
Judean skies above them ; Pharisees, whom they had 
been taught to hate, still sat in Moses' seat ; the 
Roman yoke still rested unbroken upon their necks ; 
all things had turned back to the old, dead level of 
hopeless waiting and vain desire. What could they 
do but go back to the shores of their sea and fish in 
its waters, with none to tell them where to cast their 
nets, to still its waves, to speak the word of life from 
their boats ? We all know what broken and vanished 
hopes are, and the pains of dissolving happy visions. 
Who has not waked from some bright dream of 
sweet fields and soft winds, to hear the storm of 



o 



Christ's treatment of unwilling skeptics. 



winter beating against the shutter, and the sullen 
drip of rain upon the sod ? Who has not dreamed 
that the dear dead have come back, to the couch 
beside us, in the cradle that we touch in the dark- 
ness, in the chair by the hearth, and waked to find 
that " day brings back our night" ? And hopes more 
real than these — day-dreams built out of substan- 
tial elements, bright assurances of fortune and hap- 
piness and success — have faded away in a moment, 
leaving us bewildered, smitten in heart and confused 
in mind, doubting the reality of all things, yet held 
by some tender forces of our nature ; for long after 
the mind has lost its hold on reality, the heart re- 
tains it by some power of its own. 

It was so with these two men ; their hopes and 
expectations had been thrown into confusion, but 
their hearts remained true. They made no charges 
of imposture ; their disappointment turned into no 
accusations against their dead master; they could 
understand nothing in the past or present, but they 
went no farther, held back by love from the harsh 
verdict that reason might well pronounce. So it was 
now, but so it would not have continued to be. It is 
easy to imagine what their future would have been 
had Christ not appeared and brought their minds 
into harmony with their hearts. Their affection for 
him would have languished under a growing sense of 
his mistake and failure ; they would soon have come 
to regard themselves as deceived men; their pity 
for him would have turned towards themselves ; the 
memory of his gracious love would have evaporated 
as time put it at a distance ; and so head and heart 



CHRIST'S TREATMENT OF UNWILLING SKEPTICS. 31 

having been emptied of faith and love, they would 
have lapsed back into old-time Jews, with perhaps 
Sadducean indifference, or bitter hatred of all 
things. 

I speak of their possible experience because it is 
often an actual experience at present. 

Doubt is mostly a modern thing. In earlier times, 
men believed or disbelieved : they accepted the 
Christian faith or they denied it. In the Catholic 
ages, there was little of what is now known as 
skepticism ; there was ignorance and perversion and 
superstition, but not much of mental perplexity. 
The reasons are evident : there was no science to 
raise the questions that seem to antagonize faith ; 
and there was little sense of personality prompting 
every man to think for himself. Men believed be- 
cause there was nothing to hinder, and so believed 
too much, — in relics, in demons, in magic, in priestly 
power, in almost anything that was required. But 
when Protestantism, which was simply a movement 
of intelligence, swept out the superstitions and gave 
men knowledge, and so awoke independent thought, 
doubt came in, and the age of skepticism began. 

Was it well or ill ? It is enough to say that it 
was inevitable. What is inevitable is God's method, 
and that must be right and well. Knowledge and 
personality make doubt possible, but knowledge is 
also the cure of doubt ; and when we get a full and 
adequate sense of personality we are lifted into a 
region where doubt is almost impossible, for no man 
can know himself as he is and all the fullness of his 
nature without also knowing God. 



32 CHRIST'S TREATMENT OF UNWILLING SKEPTICS. 

This doubt has been of two kinds : one belongs to 
the past, the other is a feature of the present. The 
earlier was the product of an over-stringent theology ; 
of such doctrines as decrees, obscuring the freedom 
of the will ; limited atonement, teaching that Christ 
died only for the elect ; election, practically setting 
aside personal character; a limited action of the 
Holy Spirit ; a magical conception of regeneration ; a 
conception of faith as opposed to works ; a doctrine 
of reprobation that turned earth into hell ; a con- 
ception of life as under probation, and not under 
grace; and a general, doom-like atmosphere under 
which men were awed into submission or crushed 
into despair. It was a theology prolific of doubt. 
Hardy natures thrived on it in a certain way, but 
tender, sensitive, reflective minds sank under it into 
submissive sadness, or cast it from them by natural 
repulsion. 

The doubt sprang from within : I am not one of 
the elect ; I have sinned away my day of grace ; 
I have grieved the Holy Spirit ; I am not accepted 
of God ; my sins are not removed ; my hope is a 
delusion of Satan. We have but to read the reli- 
gious biographies of the last century and the early 
part of this to find it, and also its cause. 

But the theology has mostly passed away, except 
in form, and with it the form of doubt it was so 
well fitted to produce. Another kind of doubt has 
taken the place of the old, doubt that springs from 
without, a perplexity very like that which troubled 
these two men on the road to Emmaus. It is a doubt, 
not of self, but of something outside of self. For, 



CHRIST'S TREATMENT OF UNWILLING SKEPTICS. 33 

just now, thought is mainly fixed on the external 
world. Our poetry is introspective, and a part of 
our fiction turns on the interplay of our moral and 
spiritual mechanism, but for the most part the look 
is outward, and chiefly on the natural world and its 
order. From thence come our doubts, — doubt of 
miracle, of the truth of the Bible, of immortality, of 
the existence of a personal God, of the action of the 
Holy Spirit, of the reality of a spiritual world ; doubt 
of the soul itself, of the operations of conscience, of 
accountability, of reward and punishment. The 
source of these doubts also is plain. We are learn- 
ing so much about nature and its laws, and of our 
relations to it, that we are swamped in our knowl- 
edge, as a boat is engulfed in breakers when near 
the shore, — safe when far out on the wide sea, but 
upset when the waves meet the resistance of another 
element. It is not spiritual things that set us to 
doubting, nor yet material things, but the getting 
caught between the two ; and just now the tides of 
eternal truth are beating hard against the rocks of 
time and sense, and many are caught and engulfed 
by their conflicting forces. 

This new doubt has more reason in it than the 
old, and is even more persistent and painful. The 
old was an illusion, a disease ; the new is real, — the 
antagonism of knowledge with knowledge. It was 
painful to look into heaven and see only an angry 
God, but it was better than to see no God at all. It 
was bitter to think of endless hell, but it was not so 
sickening as to think of annihilation. It was sad to 
fear lest the Holy Spirit had passed by, but it was 



34 Christ's treatment of unwilling skeptics. 

not so dreadful as to question if there is a Spirit be- 
hind and in all this framework of nature and of self. 
It was dreary to think of human life as under a 
doom-like probation, with only a probability of escape 
from eternal condemnation, but it was not so dismal 
nor so fatal as to doubt accountability and to suspect 
the eternal verdicts that await conduct and character. 
The doubt of the present day is a great weakener ; 
that of the past often detracted little from a man's 
strength. It left him face to face with duty, and 
with unimpaired conscience ; truth still existed even 
if the man were overwhelmed by a misconception of 
it ; there was reality, and no one is wholly weak in 
the presence of reality. But the doubt of to-day 
destroys the sense of reality ; it questions truth ; 
it envelops all things in its puzzle, — God, immor- 
tality, the value of life, the rewards of virtue, the 
operations of conscience ; it puts a quicksand under 
every step ; it ungirds the faculties so that they 
no longer work to any end ; it undermines purpose 
and inspiration, and leaves no path for the feet but 
aimless desire or native instinct, — life a maze, the 
heavens empty, the solid world the only reality ! 
There is much of it, and it is all about us. It is 
not always a conscious thing. The lack of moral 
earnestness, the feeble sense of spiritual things, 
the material aims and standards of success, the push 
for wealth as the only real thing, the godlessness of 
society at large, — these are its signs and fruits. 

We will not, to-day, take our thought into the 
wide world, but will instead limit it to a class. 

There are many who suffer in mind from these 



CHRIST'S TREATMENT OF UNWILLING SKEPTICS. 35 

doubts, but remain true in heart, — the mind all 
torn and bruised, dumb with perplexity, blind from 
the rapidly shifting lights that pass before it, but 
the heart still true to the faith that once was so 
beautiful and nourishing. In their hearts they still 
•hold to the living Christ, but the ruthless spirit of 
doubt in their minds leaves him a dead Christ in 
Joseph's tomb ; there is no redeemer of Israel nor 
of mankind ; his words seemed true and were full 
of promise and hope, but he himself died as helpless 
as the thieves beside him, and has gone with them 
to mix with the elements. His cry to the Father, 
his vision of Paradise, his commitment of his spirit 
to God, were the illusive ecstasy of a dying brain. 
The old sullen order of death and silence goes on 
uninterrupted ; evil and doom still have sway, and 
there is no deliverance. 

There are many who think in these ways, but still 
pray or try to pray, still keep up the Christian char- 
ities, still exercise themselves in the Christian 
graces, still deny themselves, and are brave and pa- 
tient and true and pure. 

What is to be done for such as these ? What are 
they to do for themselves? How shall the head 
come to think with the heart ? 

There is something that we can do for one another ; 
there is more that we can do for ourselves ; but full 
deliverance can be gained only through Christ him- 
self. Christ is the main factor in the solution of 
these puzzles. Put him at his full value, and the 
problem will solve itself as the sun solves the mys- 
teries of darkness and separates shadow from sub- 
stance. 



36 CHRIST'S TREATMENT OF UNWILLING SKEPTICS. 

Christ came to these two men to rescue them not 
merely from doubts, but from doubts that were sad, 
and that drew their sadness from hearts that were 
still true to him. Their heads needed him, but 
their hearts drew him. And he came to them not 
merely because their state was sad, but because it 
was dangerous. For, in the long run, the head wins 
and the heart goes under. Doubt saps the vigor of 
life. The heart wearies in its vain efforts to send 
faith into the mind when the mind ceases to play 
into it with honest conviction. And so Christ 
comes to these men for rescue. Now see how wisely 
and thoroughly he effects it. He might have said 
at once : " Your fears are groundless ; I am the 
Christ." But had he said this, they would have 
fallen at his feet in an ecstasy of joy, all their sad 
doubts flown away. Their hearts would have been 
relieved, but their heads would not have been lifted 
to the level of their hearts ; one would have been 
flooded with joy, but the other only convinced that 
this friend Jesus was still alive. 

Christ wished to put a larger conception of him- 
self, of his relation to Jewish history and to human- 
ity, into their minds, and so he discoursed to their 
minds while their hearts are still oppressed. For 
we are not in the best state to receive knowledge 
when we are surcharged with happiness; then we 
believe anything, but the belief does not strike into 
the depths of our nature and become lasting. The 
lessons we learn in sadness and from loss are those 
that abide. Sorrow clarifies the mind, steadies it, 
forces it to weigh things correctly. The soil moist 



CHRIST'S TREATMENT OF UNWILLING SKEPTICS. 37 

with tears best feeds the seeds of truth. And so 
Christ, while still but a fellow-traveler with them 
on the way to Emmaus, began with Moses and all 
the prophets, and showed them that these old scrip- 
tures concerned him ; that he — the Christ — was 
their fulfillment ; that it behooved him to suffer as 
he had, and, by such a path, to enter into his glory. 
That is, he put a broad and rational basis under their 
faith. This method of Christ's deserves the closest 
attention. He used all the knowledge of these men, 
all their beliefs, all they had ever heard or thought 
of, their whole world of truth, and said, " Christ 
is the meaning of it all ; it all leads up to him ; 
he is the key to it." He thus put a bottom under 
their faith, linked it to their knowledge, gave them 
something for their minds to feed on in the future, 
and put them in the way of learning something of 
the breadth and scope of his work. He is no man 
of a day, no mere worker of miracles, not the last 
prophet or teacher of good precepts, no gracious 
rabbi ; he is not simply one strong enough to rise 
from the dead: he is instead the fulfillment of 
Jewish history, the manifestation of all that God 
has meant from the first. All along God has been 
a deliverer by sacrifice, and now deliverance has 
come in its supreme form and power, and by the old 
and eternal way of sacrifice, and with the trium- 
phant vindication of glory entered on through resur- 
rection. 

These men could not understand this lesson at 
once, but it was lodged in their minds, and formed 
the basis of that immense transformation in thought 



38 Christ's treatment of unwilling skeptics. 

by which they and their fellows went over from 
their old conception of Christ as simply their master 
to the conception of him as the fulfillment of their 
national history, — a transformation that is other- 
wise inexplicable. The peculiarity in the change of 
the apostles after the resurrection is the immensely 
larger scope of their views. Hence their first preach- 
ing was chiefly an epitomizing of the Old Testa- 
ment. It sounds dull to our ears, but it is full of 
significance as an attempt to link Christ with all 
previous history and with the whole order of the 
world so far as they knew the world. It discloses 
truth of immense value, and shows how modern 
doubt of Christ is best met. Redemption is the 
key to this world ; there is no other. To deliver 
the world ; to get it out of the order of nature, its 
limitations, its evil, its death and doom ; to get it out 
of sin and the death of sin, — there is no other ex- 
planation of the world but this. Until you plant 
yourself on this central necessity and fact, you will 
have doubt and confusion. But see this, know this, 
and doubts vanish. 

What is needed to cure the skepticism of the day 
is a direct and, so far as may be, an adequate view 
of Christ. In the weakening and breaking-up of 
theological systems, the part in them filled by Christ 
vanishes along with the rest, and there is actually 
no function or place left for him in our thought; 
identified with the systems, he disappears with them 
as they sink out of sight. The Romish conception of 
Christ as a perpetual sacrifice, a simple offset to sin, 
cannot, even when stripped of its grossness, satisfy 



CHRIST'S TREATMENT OF UNWILLING SKEPTICS. 39 

the mind. Sin is a great fact, but it is negative, 
and Christ is here in the world for more than to 
undo a negation. Calvinism narrows still more the 
conception of Christ by making him a mere factor 
in a system of divine sovereignty and decrees and 
election, a cog in a wheel, or a wheel amongst wheels 
that grind out an irrational destiny for mankind. 
Sovereignty decrees and elects ; Christ dies for the 
elect ; the Spirit regenerates and sanctifies the ef- 
fectually called, who alone are saved, while the non- 
elect perish everlastingly by the same sovereign 
decree. It was in such a system as this that Christ 
was made to bear a part till the heart broke away 
from its cruelty and injustice, dragging the mind 
with it ; for Calvinism is strong on the mind-side, 
and is well-nigh impregnable so long as ifc is kept 
apart from the human sentiments and instincts of 
the heart. Its weakness and its downfall are due to 
the admissions it is forced to make in behalf of in- 
fants, — admissions wrenched from the system by 
the demand of the heart crying for its own, and by 
the imperative sense of fairness lodged in every 
breast. If exceptions to the inexorable grinding of 
the system can be made for infants, why not for 
others ? Through this grudgingly accorded excep- 
tion — for Calvinism still asserts that only elect 
infants are saved — the whole system is flowing out, 
as pent waters seek the narrow fissure through which 
they press at first drop by drop, but at last with 
their whole current. It is a significant fact that these 
ancient systems of theology, for the most part, break 
down over infants. It is here that human nature 



40 CHRIST'S TREATMENT OF UNWILLING SKEPTICS. 

takes its final stand and utters its defiant protest. 
It is significant also that where theology so often 
breaks down and ends, Christianity begins. " And 
he took a little child, and set him in the midst of 
them, and said, Whosoever shall receive one of 
such little children in my name receiveth me : and 
whosoever receiveth me receiveth not me, but him 
that sent me." 

But when the heart thus forced the head to admit 
that Christ died for all, and that he is the Re- 
deemer of the world, the entire system began to 
give way ; for Calvinism is not adjusted to a gen- 
eral atonement. So long as it consistently held to 
a limited atonement, it antagonized only the heart ; 
but when it became "moderate," and asserted a 
general atonement while it held on to decrees, it lost 
the respect of the head. Weak and ill-adjusted 
systems continue for a time, but at last yield to the 
instinctive demand of the mind for consistency. The 
process of disintegration is, however, attended with 
confusion and doubt. We are standing to-day in the 
midst of this theological wreck, — its ruins around 
us, its dust filling the air, and the question on many 
lips is, Where is the Christ? Has he perished 
with the system? What place are we to assign 
him in our thoughts ? What work are we to ascribe 
to him ? The exact trouble with multitudes at 
present, whose hearts still turn warmly to Christ, 
is that they are not clear what he has done for 
them, what relations he sustains to them and they 
to him. The old theology is no longer sufficiently 
coherent as a system to contain Christ : where then 



CHRIST'S TREATMENT OF UNWILLING SKEPTICS. 41 

is he? Such is the demand; for we must think 
rationally and in some order, if not within a sys- 
tem. Many stand to-day where the two disciples 
stood when on the way to Emmaus, — thrown out of 
their old conceptions, and not yet seeing any other. 
They have had a very clear idea of the kingdom 
and of the part Christ was to play in it, — a concep- 
tion supported by prophecy, definite, easily under- 
stood, and who would dare to say that it was not 
lofty, — the redemption of Israel ? But it had faded 
away, and now what shall they think of Christ ? He 
has not merely died out of their sight ; he has died 
out of their thought, and left them in mental confu- 
sion. But their doubt sprang not so much from 
what had happened to Christ as from what had hap- 
pened to their conception of him, for they had lived 
more in their theory of the redemption of Israel 
than in the personal Redeemer. It was the shatter- 
ing of their system that troubled them. It had 
filled so much space in their minds that when it was 
broken up Christ vanished with it, staying only in 
their loving hearts. 

The same thing is going on all around us. The 
systems in which Christ has been made to serve as 
a factor are thinning into mist, and losing shape 
and proportion and meaning ; and as they fade 
away or merge into other systems, the figure of 
Christ grows dim and recedes into the past along 
with the passing forms. " But no ! " our hearts 
cry, " it cannot be so ; it cannot be that Christ is 
not a reality ; it is not possible that he dies when 
the creed dies. But what does he do? What is 



42 Christ's treatment of unwilling skeptics. 

his relation to the new thought that crowds upon 
the age ? What place does he fill in the newly- 
discovered order of nature and in the fresh tasks of 
human society? What is his real relation to the 
world ? How is he a personal Saviour ? " Thank 
God, it is getting to be possible to answer these 
questions. We are coming to see that Christ, in 
his real character, was no more present in the old 
Calvinism than in the Romish mass. Christ cannot 
be put into a system. He cannot be explained by 
any one relation, such as the relation to sin, or to 
law, or to sacrifice, or to the church, or to the indi- 
vidual, or to humanity. We are beginning to see 
that instead of ascribing too large a place in theology 
to Christ, it has been too small. We made him the 
head of the elect, but not head over all ; a sacrifice 
for the sin of the world, but not the redeemer of it ; 
the head of the church, but not of humanity ; an ex- 
ample for believers, but not the order of society ; the 
Son of God, but not the Son of Man. We have 
treated him as a heavenly visitant, as God simply 
wearing a robe of flesh, as a being chiefly excep- 
tional in humanity instead of the absolute fulfillment 
of humanity. 

The task is to adjust our minds to the larger con- 
ceptions of Christ now possible and urged upon us 
by our needs and by the thought of the age. We 
need that done for us which was done for the two 
disciples, — Christ set before us as the fulfillment of 
all revelation, — natural, human, divine. We still 
think of him as our personal Saviour from the guilt 
and misery of personal sin, and still retain him in 



CHRIST'S TREATMENT OF UNWILLING SKEPTICS. 43 

all the dear, interior relations of our spirits, our 
friend and comforter and example, but we must also 
set him in those larger relations, which are now get- 
ting to be apprehended with some clearness, as the 
Head of humanity ; as containing in himself the 
history and destiny of humanity ; as the law and the 
order of human society ; as the head of the nation 
as well as of the church ; as God actually in human- 
ity, and so manifesting the divine humanity ; as the 
light of the world that lights every man born into 
it, and also lights up its dark mazes, its paths that 
run backward through all the creating ages and for- 
ward into ages of spiritual life and glory. 

Doubt is a child of limited sight ; but the vision 
of Christ is universal sight. It reveals all things ; 
it creates an order in the world ; it puts meaning 
into things ; it tells me how to get out of my 
evil and sin, how to live, what to do, and where I 
shall go ; it gives me the motive that I need and 
all the inspiration I can bear ; it makes life a real, 
orderly, and sufficient thing, — life indeed, and as 
high and strong and noble as we would have it. 
And as the vision of Christ clarifies our individual 
life, so it clears up and explains the whole world. 
It is like standing in the sun, where all the planets 
are seen moving in harmonious orbits, vast but sim- 
ple, many and unlike, but clear at the first glance. 

These are not idle words. No one can look 
seriously at the world without confessing that recon- 
ciliation is its great need, — man with man, man with 
himself, class with class, nation with nation, and all 
with God. Sense needs to be reconciled with spirit, 



44 CHRIST'S TREATMENT OF UNWILLING SKEPTICS. 

past ages with the present, time with eternity, tem- 
poral life with eternal life. And reconciliation there 
will be, for the Reconciler is at work, turning the 
hearts of men towards each other and bringing them 
into peace with themselves and so with God. There 
is no other way or name but his. If other ways 
are helpful, they are also his ; forbid them not ! 
When we catch sight of this reconciling work, and 
see it in all its vast sweep, and feel its transforming 
energy at work within us, not only do doubts vanish, 
but a great joy enters into us. " Did not our hearts 
burn within us, while he opened to us the scrip- 
tures?" 

The vision of Christ, set in the full light of all 
revelation, enkindles the whole nature. The deeps of 
God call to the deeps within us. Then we are ready 
to take up the cross and follow him to death ; then 
we are ready to lose all that we may win him. 



TKUTH THEOUGH AND BY LIFE. 



" In theology, intuition works marvels. While ordinary intelli- 
gences are climbing the paths of the holy mountain by force of 
study, the choicest minds gain its summit with one bound. They 
do not learn; they understand. They have the instinct of the 
divine. While the argument is going on in the dark, sudden flashes 
overflow them. What matter words and formulas ? They see, 
they possess, they enjoy." — Joseph Roux, Meditations of a 
Parish Priest. 

11 I am sure that when the listening repose of the multitude was 
broken as the sermon closed, and, like a melted stream, the crowd 
flowed away into the city, the people carried something more with 
them than a handful of good precepts. I think that they went 
silently, or with few words, with something of exaltation and 
wonder at themselves in their faces. They had been taught that 
they were God's children. One who was evidently God's Son him- 
self had told them so. He had bidden them, as God's children, at 
once to see duty with something of his own immediateness of per- 
ception, and also to hear him announcing it to them out of a 
Father's lips. Duty, the thing they ought to do, had shone for 
them that morning at once with its own essential sweetness and 
with the illumination of the Father's will. No wonder that as 
they walked together they said to one another : ' He speaks to us 
with authority.' " — Rev. Phillips Brooks, D. D., The Influence 
of Jesus, p. 33. 



TEUTH THKOUGH AND BY LIFE. 



Then certain of the Scribes and Pharisees answered him, saying 1 , 
Master, we would see a sign froni thee. But he answered and said 
unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign ; 
and there shall no sign be given to it but the sign of Jonah the 
prophet : for as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly 
of the whale ; so shall the Son of man be three days and three 
nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh shall stand 
up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it ; for 
they repented at the preaching of Jonah ; and behold, a greater 
than Jonah is here. The queen of the south shall rise up in the 
judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it; for she 
came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon ; 
and behold, a greater than Solomon is here. — St. Matt, xii. 
38-43. 

One of the foremost questions among Biblical 
scholars at present is, How did Christ quote the 
Old Testament? Did he cast upon it a supernat- 
ural light, confirming its letter and vindicating its 
statistical and historical accuracy by direct and 
superior knowledge ; or did he use it simply to 
illustrate and confirm his points ? The trend of 
thought is towards the latter view. Christ did not 
concern himself with questions of interpretation ; 
they did not exist in his day ; nor would he have 
regarded them if they had existed, nor will those 
who have entered into his mind pay much heed to 



48 TRUTH THROUGH AND BY LIFE. 

them. The superior knowledge of Christ did not 
pertain to such questions. His use, by way of il- 
lustration, of a name or an incident settles no tech- 
nical question that may be raised in regard to it ; 
he simply used it as he found it. But the way in 
which he used any character or incident does settle 
the moral element or truth involved in the character 
or incident. For example, Christ here refers to 
Jonah, but his reference does not indicate how the 
book of Jonah is to be interpreted, — whether it is 
to be regarded as historical, or parabolic, or poet- 
ical, or mythical, — yet it does confirm and indorse 
the moral truth involved in the story. He swept 
past the formal questions that might be raised as 
to literal accuracy, and struck for the spiritual 
truth contained in them, which does not depend 
upon literal accuracy. Why think of small ques- 
tions when there are large ones at hand ? It would 
be well to imitate him in this respect. 

It is curious to observe the subtle contrast Christ 
makes between Jonah and Solomon. The Scribes 
and Pharisees say to him, " Master, we would see a 
sign from thee ; " and they would prefer one from 
heaven, some stupendous and outflashing miracle, 
— a portend in the sky forerunning some event, the 
sun standing still, the stars turned back in their 
courses, the clouds moving at his word. Then they 
would believe on him. A natural request, it may 
be thought, and one still made. These Scribes, and 
those who now repeat it, do not see that thus they 
put themselves on the level of the heathen who 
build their faith on external signs. The apparent 



TRUTH THROUGH AND BY LIFE. 49 

miracle is the basis of all religions till we come to 
Christ, but all the generations they taught were 
wicked and adulterous. A religion so founded and 
forced into men from the outside, cannot make them 
better ; it may control them, but it cannot change 
and mould them into goodness. Christ turns on 
them with an emphasis borrowed from his own deep 
insight rather than from their dull perception, and 
says, Why do you ask for any other signs than those 
I have given you ? I have preached the gospel to 
the poor; I have done works of saving mercy and 
redeeming love; I have preached repentance; I 
have enthroned love amongst you and will lift it 
still higher, for I shall die and rise again for its vin- 
dication. These signs, wrought on the earth and not 
in the sky, before your hearts and not before your 
eyes, are all I shall give, because they are all that 
will do you good, all that reveal my power and attest 
that I came from the Father. In illustration, he 
refers them to their own Scriptures, and says, My 
sign is like Jonah's. He preached repentance ; that 
was his sign; it is also mine. He came to his work 
of deliverance after an imprisonment like that of 
the tomb ; I shall come to the crowning vindication 
of my work from the grave. As Jonah's experience 
was linked to his preaching of repentance, so my 
resurrection will be for the comfort and the justifi- 
cation of those who believe on me. Neither Jonah's 
imprisonment nor my resurrection has any meaning 
as a sign apart from its moral purpose. Christ thus 
illustrated himself through Jonah. He did not com- 
mit himself to the details of Jonah's history, but 
simply pierced their meaning. 



50 TRUTH THROUGH AND BY LIFE. 

But on what a height does it place that much- 
scoffed at bit of Hebrew Scripture ! Mockers hold 
it up to contempt and blind zealots urge its literal 
truth, — both wrong and equally oblivious of its 
profound meaning. To both, Jonah in the whale's 
belly is the main thing, but Jonah led by God to 
his duty of preaching repentance, and foreshadowing 
the supreme truth of universal divine mercy, is over- 
looked. Christ chose him out of moral sympathy 
to illustrate himself. 

Not thus did he treat Solomon. A keen critic, 
had one been present, might have detected an ap- 
parently invidious comparison between the humblest 
of the prophets and the greatest of the kings. Sol- 
omon was the ideal king of the Jewish nation ; he 
stood for its highest conception and embodied its 
highest hopes. Solomon was David's son, and the 
Messiah would be David's son ; they would be sim- 
ilar. The long, peaceful, brilliant, and powerful 
reign of that monarch was like that which should 
come. His wisdom was of the sort that delighted 
the oriental mind, — ethical, prudential, keen, and 
reverent. His piety was that of the ritual, and did 
not exclude the highest degree of present and imme- 
diate enjoyment. Thus Solomon stood before the 
Jews, but Christ seems to have had little liking for 
him. He mentions him but twice, and then in terms 
of unfavorable contrast. His glory, when put on to 
the full, was not equal to that of the Syrian rose by 
the wayside. Something of a shock he must have 
given to the conventional ideas of those who had 
sounded the glory of Solomon for a thousand years ! 



TRUTH THROUGH AND BY LIFE. 51 

But underneath lurks a low estimate of Solomon: 
his glory was of a sort Christ did not believe in ; 
the lily that purpled the fields had a truer glory be- 
cause it reflected the glory of him who made it. So 
here, while allowing a certain wisdom to Solomon 
that drew a curious stranger from afar, he unhesi- 
tatingly asserts his own as superior and himself as 
greater. Christ does not here contrast Solomon with 
himself as the conscious Messiah, but because his 
teaching was truer and his kingdom had the elements 
of a better glory. There is an undertone of slight 
regard and rejection, that the disciples seem to have 
caught, for his name is never mentioned again. He 
is not named in the heroical and saintly list in He- 
brews, nor does he appear in the stupendous sym- 
bolism of the Apocalypse. Both he and his reign 
represent the ease and external glory of the nation, 
— not the struggles by which it achieved them. 
Neither he nor his reign stands for any great truth, 
or moral principle, or spiritual purpose. 

We will now inquire in what respects Christ was 
greater than Solomon. 

Christ, as I said, was not forcing his Messiahship 
on the people ; he did not teach this by assertion 
apart from truth that revealed it. He did not set 
his Messianic character over against one who could 
not have had it if he would ; that would have been 
like the triumph of a mountain over a hillock, or of 
the head over the hand. He is making a compar- 
ison that rebukes those who are before him. And 
what was their fault ? They failed to recognize the 
truth when they heard it ; they failed to see in 



52 TRUTH THROUGH AND BY LIFE. 

Christ's works a revelation of God ; and they had a 
false conception of wisdom and of greatness. The 
men of Nineveh understood when they heard a 
preacher of repentance, but you do not, though I 
preach it more plainly. The queen of the south 
came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom 
of Solomon, but I bring a profounder wisdom, and 
you do not recognize it. In the judgment, these 
heathen will condemn you, — you who read the 
preaching of Jonah and the Proverbs of Solomon. 
The comparison turns on the points in which it was 
possible for Solomon and himself to be compared, 
not on his own nature or official character. 

We will contrast them only as teachers. 

The Proverbs could not well be spared from the 
Bible nor dropped out of the life of the world. A 
proverb is the condensed wisdom of long experience. 
When men have found out that a principle or habit 
is true and right, some wise man puts it into a brief, 
epigrammatic form that is easily remembered, and 
so always ready for use. It becomes a sort of guide 
or law, ready at hand, by which men decide con- 
duct ; and so used its value is great. It appeals to 
common sense and intuition, and saves the necessity 
of argument and reflection and special examina- 
tion of each case. Take the most familiar of all : 
" Honesty is the best policy." No one questions it ; 
if one is tempted to dishonesty, it is ready with its 
imperative lesson. If a man is wavering, it besieges 
him with its irresistible wisdom, and draws him 
back from his own sophistry. It has all the force of 
all the ages of experience ; it is the universal verdict 



TRUTH THROUGH AND BY LIFE. 53 

of mankind. It does more to keep men honest than 
all the laws that ever were made. But if it has 
value, it also has defect, and the defect applies to 
nearly all proverbs. It is a rule, and rules do not 
create character. A man might obey this proverb 
forever and not be an honest man ; he acts honestly, 
but he may not be honest. For the most part, prov- 
erbs prescribe conduct, but do not furnish a full and 
proper motive. Now, conduct is of immense impor- 
tance, and is the constant attendant of character, but 
it falls short of character. Hence proverbs most 
abound and are chiefly used in early stages of society 
and by untrained minds. There are few of recent 
origin, and the cultured mind seldom uses them. 
They are the alphabet of morals ; they are usually 
but half truths, and they seldom contain the principle 
of the action they teach. They are commonly pru- 
dential, watch-words and warnings, and so lean to- 
wards a selfish view of life. These remarks apply 
only in part to the Proverbs of Solomon, because 
he threw into them all the fear of God and all 
the religious knowledge that his nation possessed; 
many of them reach a long way towards the Ser- 
mon on the Mount, and some touch the deepest 
springs of the human heart. They are of highest 
use, and ought to be read and re-read for their 
wisdom, their broad interpretation of life, and their 
ethical value. Especially ought the young, with 
whom conduct comes first, to study them. They 
are strong in the warnings they sound against in- 
dulgence of the passions, — lust, anger, pride, envy, 
drunkenness. They protest against lying and cheat- 



54 TRUTH THROUGH AND BY LIFE. 

ing and bribing and every form of social unright- 
eousness. They touch tenderly on the family and 
press its duties. They bear down heavily on folly of 
all sorts, the idle, tale-bearing, senseless tongue, and 
many of them are " rods for a fool's back." They 
insist on truth and simplicity and justice and modera- 
tion, on humility and patience and charity and kind- 
ness. Everywhere they exalt wisdom and identify 
it with goodness, and their universal characteristic 
is common sense. They are also reverential and 
abound in mention of God. For practical wisdom 
and as daily guides of conduct, there are no other 
utterances of truth comparable with them. If they 
were heeded and obeyed, they would bring the in- 
dividual, the family, the community, the nation, into 
a state of ideal perfection. Their lack is that they 
have no power to turn into living, moulding energy, 
They simply state truth, and prescribe conduct. 
They are impersonal, and have no living force to 
drive them home. Truth has little power except as 
it comes from a person who adequately represents it. 
Hence you will never have a supreme truth at work 
in the world until a supreme person utters it and 
vindicates it in his life. These Proverbs of Solomon 
were spoken to an age that swept past them into 
destruction. Why did the people not heed them ? 
Because there was no personal force and incarnation 
of them behind them. The author himself violated 
many of them, and drew others out of his own bitter 
experience. Truth must be incarnated in a just 
representative in order to be powerful. This is the 
weakness of the Proverbs viewed as effective agents ; 



TRUTH THROUGH AND BY LIFE. 55 

they are without incarnation. Truth cannot save a 
man nor a world ; only a person can do that. The 
world is flooded with truth and always has been, but 
how powerless ! Truth ! it is the commonest thing. 
It cries in the street and from the housetop. There 
are thousands of books full of it; thousands of 
teachers who are all the while declaring it. It is 
wrought into systems by the philosophers ; it echoes 
from the measures of the poets ; it sparkles upon the 
pages of the essayists — Plutarch and Bacon and 
Montaigne and Emerson ; it drops from the daily 
speech of all men, and all men everywhere confess 
it : but the world pays small heed to its multitudinous 
voice, — offering an outward homage, but pressing 
on in paths of greed and passion and ambition and 
falsehood, knowing truth but never wise. Truth is 
not indeed without influence and inspiring force, but 
how incommensurate with its clearness and its uni- 
versality ! And whatever influence it has is chiefly 
of a prudential sort ; it plays about the surface of 
life, repressing or enforcing conduct, but creating 
no fountain of life. Truth must be grounded in a 
person and be vindicated in life : then it becomes a 
reality ; then it appeals to men ; then it flows along 
its divinely created channel, — from life to life, 
from heart to heart, from spirit to spirit. 

These thoughts enable us to compare Solomon and 
Christ as teachers. We search in vain amongst the 
Proverbs for the man who uttered them, and we 
search the man in vain for the profound practical 
wisdom that dropped from his lips, — a man teaching 
humility and simplicity but fond of pomp and glory, 



56 TRUTH THROUGH AND BY LIFE. 

reverent and believing but lapsing into idolatry, 
urging domestic virtues but lacking in their prac- 
tice, full of wise, healthy speech but himself misan- 
thropic, teaching a way of life he did not follow, 
driven to God at last by failure, and not brought to 
him along the path of rectitude that he so clearly 
discerned. Hence his truth went out naked into the 
world, and weighted by his failure to realize it in 
himself. He gets at truth on its negative side, by 
an experience of its opposite, and not by a direct, 
positive appropriation of it. 

Turn now to Christ. We can match nearly every 
precept of Christ with a like one from Solomon. 
Why does it not appeal to us with equal force? 
First, Christ had a single, solid background for his 
truth, — God the Father, — while Solomon spoke from 
an observation of human life, or rather of the 
world as it goes. Hence Christ's truth wore an eter- 
nal character and was as the voice of God himself ; 
it was absolute ; it came from above, and was not 
picked up here and there. Christ stood upon the 
earth and looked abroad and up into heaven, and 
repeated the one word of God he heard. His teach- 
ing had unity and divine emphasis and power; it 
was a revelation of the mind of God. But Solomon, 
gifted indeed with an ethical discernment that justifies 
his distinction as " the wisest man," sat on his throne 
and looked about him, translating the conduct and 
histories of men into their equivalents in language. 
The wisdom of one is from above ; that of the other 
is from the world and wears everywhere a mundane 
cast. One speaks with indisputable authority ; the 



TRUTH THROUGH AND BY LIFE. 57 

other but shows man to himself, and in such a reve- 
lation there is no redeeming power ; the stream will 
not float one above its fountain. It may seem 
strange that two precepts, stating the same truth, 
equally well phrased, should not have equal power. 
It is because the power of truth lies chiefly in its 
source. For truth has not in itself a propelling 
power commensurate to the resistance it meets in 
human nature ; wisdom is no match for passion. 
Truth must come to men weighted and charged with 
outside energy ; and the only power that men uni- 
versally and unquestionably heed is the power of 
God. Hence Christ referred his teachings directly 
to the Father; his words were not his own, but were 
given him of the Father. Thus they had all the 
commanding power, the absolute truth, the infinite 
appeal, the sovereign authority of God. This was 
not a mere claim of Christ's, a shrewd trick, like the 
Delphic and Memnonian oracles, to win attention ; 
it was the outcome of his divine consciousness, and 
was so clearly attested that the whole world has 
confessed its reality ; for whatever be thought of the 
person of Christ, none will deny that his words were 
divine. 

There is also a wide unlikeness in the tone of their 
teachings, especially if the book of Ecclesiastes is 
referred to Solomon. This book stands in the Bible 
rather as a warning than a guide, telling us how not 
to think of life. It echoes the universal voice of 
mankind as it interprets itself by its own light : 
life is a puzzle ; good and evil are inextricably min- 
gled ; time and chance have sway ; there is one end 



58 TRUTH THROUGH AND BY LIFE. 

to all alike ; all is vanity and vexation of spirit. So 
has the book of life been read in all ages, — from 
Job to Hamlet, from Solomon to Goethe ; and the 
wisest conclusions are, Trust God and wait ; forget 
destiny in action. Both are wise, but they do not 
lift the burden from the heart nor take perplexity 
out of the mind. Under such an interpretation of 
life, men are left to themselves, and so either walk 
prudently amongst the shadows, or eat and drink in 
their to-day, or curse God in pessimistic despair. 

Christ's teachings are the contrast to this. Life is 
no puzzle to him ; it presents no question. There is 
no " time and chance " in his words. Good does 
not die out into evil, life does not sink away into 
vanity. Everywhere and always there is one clear, 
unvarying note sounding an eternal distinction be- 
tween good and evil, declaring life to be good and a 
path to blessedness. It is not a phantasm, nor a 
play of illusions, nor a doubtful struggle, nor a pro- 
cess of vanity. It is not something to be inter- 
preted by sibylline leaves scattered on the winds and 
burned by fire. It is not the riddle of a sphinx, a 
guess involving destiny. It is not something that 
passes with immeasurable gradations towards Nir- 
vana, the nothing or the all. Christ's treatment of 
life contrasts with that of Plato, who finds its reali- 
zation in beautiful dreams of ideal conditions ; and 
with that of the dramatists, who picture it held down 
under destiny ; and with that of the moralists, who 
put it under a bare theory of endurance or enjoy- 
ment. His view of life is simple, but it covers it ; 
it is clear, but clear because his sky is full of light ; 



TRUTH THROUGH AND BY LIFE. 59 

it is not only without question, but without the sus- 
picion of it ; it is not only without doubt or uncer- 
tainty, but it seems not to know them. It is the 
reverse of the conception of life as a contending 
play between doubt and hope, and, while a truly hu- 
man and natural view, it becomes divine by the ab- 
sence of all human limitations and weaknesses, and 
is full of the yea and amen of absolute vision. 

God is the Father ; men are his children ; the pure 
in heart see him ; the meek inherit the earth ; love 
is the one duty, hate the one evil ; struggle is not 
in vain ; suffering has its recompense ; evil does not 
triumph and is not eternal ; sorrow and sacrifice are 
real but joy is above them. The kingdom of heaven 
is the only reality, and Satan may be trampled un- 
der foot. Nowhere in Christ's words do we discover 
any balancing of probable and improbable, any sense 
of mystery, any question as to the meaning of life, 
any perplexity as to duty, any doubt of the reality 
of things, of their source or character or purpose or 
end. His view of life is that of a child and also 
that of God ; simple as that of a child and incon- 
trovertible as that of Omniscience. It is this over- 
whelming positiveness, this uniformity of assertion, 
swaying neither way under the pressure of events, 
this single and yet universal interpretation of life, 
that puts him in contrast not only with Solomon, but 
with all other teachers. Christ alone explains life 
and harmonizes it. 

There is another contrast between these two teach- 
ers ; one made but small personal vindication of his 
teaching, while the other brought his life into ideal 
harmony with all that he taught. 



60 TRUTH THROUGH AND BY LIFE. 

In certain prudential and practical matters of 
state policy, Solomon illustrated his teachings, but 
he did not cast himself upon their moral principles. 
He was a man of keen insight and ready wit, pro- 
foundly reflective, reverent in spirit, and broad in 
his views of life. He saw clearly that the nation 
was founded in righteousness ; he well understood 
the secret of his father's reign, and started out in 
the same path of righteous and reverent energy, but 
rather in the way of imitation and by hereditary 
propulsion. He relied mainly on resources already 
provided, and simply guided the nation along the 
path of power on which it had entered. In scope 
of mind he was greater than David, but he lacked 
his energy and moral force and lofty devotion. His 
character was not equal to the temptations it met. 
He saw all manner of folly, wickedness, wrong, mis- 
take, and set them down in solemn or stinging epi- 
grams, but did not throw himself as a personal force 
into the evil in order to overcome it. He was a 
critic but not a reformer, a commentator on life but 
not a leader in it. He illustrates a common mistake, 
— the mistake of the mere thinker and moralist who 
utters his word and trusts to its inherent efficacy for 
results, — the mistake of those who do not follow 
precept with example, who preach crusades but stay 
at home, who discourse upon life but withhold them- 
selves from the struggle of it. It is a mistake be- 
cause it violates the inmost meaning of life as a real 
process in the world. For life is not a set of propo- 
sitions, nor a series of ideas, nor a congeries of re- 
lated truths, but is a process of action ; it is truth 



TRUTH THROUGH AND BY LIFE. 61 

at work, truth impersonated and vindicating its re- 
ality through actual struggle and endurance and 
victory. Life is achievement, and truth does its 
work only under that conception. If life were not 
this, — that is, a process of achievement, — there 
would have been no occasion for a real world; an 
existence of mere ideas or perceptions, or of pure 
mind without body or world, would have answered 
as well. One who utters truth and does not incar- 
nate it in consistent action ignores the central prin- 
ciple of creation. Life is to be lived and truth is 
to be won by a process, nor can it have power in 
any other way. Divorced from life, it is simply a 
soul without an upholding and inclosing body ; it is 
the absolute without the eternally necessary relative. 
When we turn to Christ, we find a teacher who 
taught mainly by his life, and relied upon nothing 
else to vindicate his truth : his life was his teaching ; 
he himself was the truth. So entirely and abso- 
lutely was this his method that he provided no other 
channel, making no book, employing no scribe, sel- 
dom appealing to the memory of his hearers for the 
preservation of his words, but always to his works 
and life. He spoke the Sermon on the Mount, and 
then went up and down Galilee illustrating it. The 
miracles were but the acting out of the truths he 
had received from God ; his method was the method 
of God; the Father worked perpetually, and he 
worked. His teaching was no second-hand process ; 
he did not content himself with teaching teachers, 
but turned truth straight into life. There is not a 
positive utterance of Christ's but is expressed in 



62 TRUTH THROUGH AND BY LIFE. 

action ; not a duty enjoined but lie did it ; not a 
feeling urged but he felt it; not a hope imparted 
but he reposed on it ; not a principle urged but he 
illustrated it. 

There are certain truths essential to salvation, — 
consecration to God, a life of the Spirit, love through 
sacrifice, resurrection from the dead, and life eternal. 
Christ taught them by action, in his own person. 
We do not have these truths on the authority of his 
words ; we have them on the authority of his life. 
He was baptized to signify his consecration ; he 
opened himself to the Spirit and was rilled with it ; 
his whole life was a ministry of love by sacrifice ; 
and in order to plant this central truth undyingly 
in the hearts of the world, he first acted it out in 
symbols of broken bread, and poured out wine — a 
vain and inconsistent thing in itself, — and then 
went out and suffered his body to be broken and 
his blood to be shed on the cross. To teach resur- 
rection and future life, he rose from the dead and 
ascended alive into the heavens. Not to have died 
and risen again and ascended, would have taken 
unity out of his life as a teacher, and left him a weak 
and inconsistent figure on the page of history. 

There is a marked avoidance by Christ of all 
methods of teaching except this one of personal 
action. It is a characteristic that goes to the very 
foundations, and holds up the whole structure of 
Christianity. In this, Christ is true to himself as 
the manifestation of God ; for what do we know of 
God except by his works, and how shall Christ 
manifest God truly except by works ? It goes fur- 



TRUTH THROUGH AND BY LIFE. 63 

ther still, and accords with creation as an actual 
and not an ideal process. It is a confirmation of 
human life as a reality, through which alone truth 
can be realized. In simpler words, it is an assertion 
that the meaning, the value, the truth of life can be 
gained only by an actual performance of its duties ; 
and it is a denial that truth can be learned and the 
soul saved in any other way. A man cannot be 
taught, or lectured, or preached, or inspired, either 
into a knowledge of truth or into salvation. He 
must give himself in actual consecration to God ; he 
must suffer himself to be led by the Spirit; he must 
die on the cross with Christ, and then he may hope 
to rise with him and enter into life everlasting. 

It is in such a light as this that Christ stands out 
the supreme teacher. Not only does his life vindi- 
cate his truth, but it is the truth, and with what 
tremendous reality is it taught ! 

What are words, precepts, syllogisms, pictures, 
appeals, commands ; what are eloquence, poetry, 
music, art, beside this living way, this way of truth 
lived out through all its steps of struggle, and endur- 
ance, and faith, and death, till it ended in the joy 
thus, and thus only, to be achieved ? 

The lesson is beyond expression practical. We 
know no truth except by action. We can teach no 
vital truth except through the life. We cannot at- 
tain to the eternal joy except as we walk step by 
step in that path of actual duty and performance in 
which he walked, who so gained its fullness and sat 
down at the right hand of the Father. 



LIFE NOT VANITY. 



" It must be some Divine Efflux running 1 quite through our Souls, 
awakening and exalting all the vital powers of them into an active 
sympathy with some Absolute good, that renders us completely 
blessed. It is not to sit gazing upon a Deity by some thin specula- 
tions ; but it is an inward feeling and sensation of this Mighty Good- 
ness displaying itself within us, melting our fierce and furious 
natures, that would fain be something in contradiction to God, into 
an universal Compliance with itself, and wrapping up our amorous 
minds wholly into itself, whereby God comes to be all in all to us. ' ' 
— Dr. John Smith. 

' ' I am heartily sorry for those persons who are constantly talk- 
ing of the perishable nature of things and the nothingness of human 
life ; for, for this very end we are here, to stamp the perishable with 
an imperishable worth ; and this can only be done by taking a just 
estimate of both." — Goethe. 

"The angel of righteousness is delicate and modest, and meek 
and quiet. Take from thyself grief, for it is the sister of doubt and 
ill temper. Grief is more evil than all the spirits, and is most 
dreadful to the servants of God, and beyond all spirits destroyeth 
man. For, as when good news has come to any one in grief, straight- 
way he forgetteth his former grief, and no longer attendeth to any- 
thing except the good news which he hath heard, so do ye, also ! 
having received a renewal of your spirit through the beholding of 
these good things. Put on, therefore, gladness, that hath always 
favor before God, and is acceptable unto him, and delight thyself 
in it ; for every man that is glad doeth the things that are good, and 
thinketh good thoughts, despising grief." — Shepherd of Hernias. 



LIFE NOT VANITY. 



Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my 
life ; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. — Psauh 
xxiii. 6. 

The phrase of the poet, that " this wise world is 
mainly right," has no better illustration than the use 
it makes of this twenty-third Psalm. There is no 
other form of words which it holds so dear, save per- 
haps the Lord's Prayer ; but if that has a superior 
majesty, this has a deeper tenderness; if one is 
divine, the other is perfectly human, and its " touch 
of nature makes the whole world kin." 

It was undoubtedly written by David, having all 
the marks of the man upon it ; not while he was a 
shepherd-boy, but after an experience of life, and per- 
haps during the very stress of it. For a shepherd- 
boy does not sing of flocks and pastures, even if he 
be a true poet, but of things that he has dreamed 
yet not seen, imagined but not realized. Hence, 
youthful poetry is of things afar off, while the poetry 
of men is of things near at hand and close to their 
life, — the daisies under their feet, and the hills that 
rise from their doors. The young, when they ex- 
press themselves, are full of sentimentality ; that is, 



68 LIFE NOT VANITY. 

feeling not yet turned into reality under experience ; 
but there is no sentimentality here, — only solid wis- 
dom, won by experience and poured out as feeling. 
The shepherd-boy becomes a warrior and king ; life 
presses hard on him ; he covers it in its widest ex- 
tremes, tastes all its joy and bitterness ; his heart is 
full and empty ; he loves and loses ; he is hunted 
like a partridge and he rules over nations ; he digs 
deep pits for himself into which he falls, but rises 
out of them and soars to heaven. His nature was 
broad and apparently contradictory, and every phase 
of his character, every impulse of his heart, had its 
outward history. Into but few lives was so much 
life crowded ; few have touched it at so many points, 
for he not only passed through vast changes of for- 
tune, but he had a life of the heart and of the spirit 
correspondingly vast and various ; and so his experi- 
ence of life may be said to be universal, a thing that 
cannot be said of Caesar or Napoleon, — men whose 
lives outwardly correspond to his. Hence, when 
some stress of circumstance was heavy upon him and 
faith rose superior to it, or perchance when the whole 
lesson of life had been gone over and he grasped its 
full meaning, he sang this hymn of faith and con- 
tent. He sought the frame-work of his thought in his 
boyhood, — those fresh days when he led his sheep 
into pastures that were green, and by waters that 
were still. For a fine nature is always going back 
to its youth, won towards the innocence and sim- 
plicity it has known and partly lost, and thus assur- 
ing itself that they are an eternal possession to be 
gained again. We go back to youthhood because 



LIFE NOT VANITY. 69 

there is a youth before us. The race of life is a 
circle ; its early days are a goal to which, as well as 
from which, we press, seeking their joy, their free- 
dom, their innocence, their insensibility to time, their 
harmony with the things that are. What, then, is 
the gain if we come back to our starting-point? 
Only in learning that these things are realities, turn- 
ing them into the bone and sinew of compact human 
life, taking them from their source in God and weav- 
ing them into a conscious personality. 

Once before, also, this king, whose life spread be- 
tween a harp and a sword, recurred, in the same 
poetic way, to his youth. When shut in a hold, near 
his birthplace, by the Philistines, and condemned to 
weary inactivity, he yearns for the water of the well 
by the gate where he had watered his flocks, and 
he himself had drank in the light of the eyes of 
the Hebrew maidens. Who has not felt the same, 
— longed in some weary moment of heavy labor or 
fretful care for the shade of the trees that overspread 
him in childhood, for the water that gushed from the 
spring, for the patter of the rain on the roof, when 
the night brought no darkness and life had no 
shadow ? " Cherish the dreams of thy youth," says 
the ancient sage. Life is going wrong with us if the 
hard present crowds out the memory of the early 
past. Keep alive thy youth, for it may be won 
back! 

This Psalm of reminiscence is not simply a leap 
over intervening years into the first of them, but, 
starting thence with a metaphor, it is a review of life 
and an estimate of it ; it is an interpretation of life. 



70 LIFE NOT VANITY. 

On looking it over and summing it up, the author 
states his view of life ; his life, indeed, but what man 
ever had a better right to pronounce on life in gen- 
eral? If life is evil, he certainly ought to have 
known it. If life is good, he had abundant chance 
to prove it by tasting it in all its widest variety. We 
are not to read these words of flowing sweetness as 
we listen to soothing music, a lullaby in infancy and 
a death-song in age, but as a judgment on human 
life. It is Oriental, but it is logical ; it is objective, 
but it goes to the centre ; it is simple, but it is uni- 
versal ; it is one life, but it may be all lives. It is 
not the picture of life as allotted and necessary, but 
as achieved. Live your life aright and interpret it 
aright, and see if it is not what you find here. 

Let us search out the various notes of this Psalm; 
I think we shall find them uniting in a harmony 
that is jubilant. 

It may be said broadly that it is an utterance of 
cheer. 

The writer is satisfied that life is good, and is so to 
be spoken of. He is not insensible to its heavy and 
dark side, but he defies it in a certain way. He may 
walk in the very shadow of death, as he had often 
done and as all do, but he will fear no evil. Death 
is a fearful thing, but the fear of it, not death, is the 
evil. It is an orderly thing, a part of the leading of 
the good Shepherd. We are not forsaken when we 
die, but are led still. The lambs of our human 
flocks are not left untended when they enter this 
shadowy realm, but are folded in his bosom ; they 
return not to us, but we go to them. He gets into 



LIFE NOT VANITY. 71 

many a dark valley, as we all do, — disappointments 
that cloud him, losses that make effort seem vain, 
strifes that overtax strength, treacheries that breed 
despair, failures that beget disgust, temptations that 
beguile into hideous sin, false loves and true, and 
each ending in sorrow. As subject, and king, and 
husband, and father, and brother, and kinsman, and 
even in his relations to God, this man had experi- 
ences that were enough to lead him to throw up the 
game of life as lost, but they did not so work in him. 
He pressed through their first meaning and influence 
to their real significance. With a brave and patient 
heart and a regal will — both open to the Spirit of 
God — he pushed on and worked his way through, 
never losing sight of the guiding rod and comforting 
staff of his divine Shepherd. And so, at last, these 
experiences change color and begin to seem to him 
good ; they so work in and harmonize him that his 
whole nature is full of gladness. 

There is also in this Psalm a tone of triumph. 
He has eaten from spread tables of bounty before his 
enemies ; they do not fret him nor break the peace- 
ful current of his life. This wise man learned that 
highest of all arts, — how to bear himself towards his 
enemies. Enemies he necessarily had, as every strong 
man, who lives a full life, must have. One cannot 
touch life at many points and do a man's work in 
the world without arousing more or less of what may 
be called enmity, — criticism, jealousy, misrepresen- 
tation, slander, contempt, ostracism. David was no 
weakling who sat down before his enemies and suf- 
fered them to do what they would with him and his 



72 LIFE NOT VANITY. 

kingdom ; he thwarted and punished where he justly 
might, and bore the rest patiently, passing by the 
greater part with lofty indifference. Nor is any man 
required to ignore enmity. We have a personality, 
an influence, a character, a work, to guard and keep 
clear. It is not the part of truth and of true men to 
leave an open path for evil and evil men. Pharisees 
are to be burned in fires of their own kindling ; Sad- 
ducees are to be silenced ; Satan is to be trampled 
under foot. Truth is not an impersonal thing, and 
life is not a play of generalities. It is a personal 
world, and the contact of good and evil is personal, 
and therefore it breeds enmity and compels conflict. 
Forbearance, patience, and indifference, are indeed 
the greater part of our duty before enmity, but never 
dull acquiescence, and often relentless war. All de- 
pends on the question and the issue at stake. We 
may suffer personally, but we have no right to let 
truth suffer. Christ allowed the Pharisees to crucify 
him, but never for one moment did he cease in his 
conflict against them. He forgave those who nailed 
him to the cross, — not knowing what they did, — 
but he never forgave the traitors to the truth. When 
we make this distinction and keep personal feeling 
in abeyance, enmity is not so hard a thing to bear. 
Rather, in a superior man, it begets a sort of ecstasy. 
He walks his way amidst averted faces in triumph ; 
one with God is a majority ; legions of unseen angels 
keep him company ; and the kingdom will surely 
come. 

David also puts into this Psalm a spirit of content 
and satisfaction. His cup is full and runs over ; his 



LIFE NOT VANITY. 73 

head is perfumed with the oil of gladness ; goodness 
and mercy follow him every day of his life. So it has 
been and so it shall be ; he has been in God's house 
from the first, and there he will stay forever. Life 
is good to him ; it is not vanity, nor a lie, nor a dis- 
solving vision, but a solid and true thing, full of joy 
and peace. But the man who thinks so did not 
reach this conclusion because he was a king. What 
other king ever spoke words like these? He was 
not insensible to his outward career, but it was not 
the gold of his crown nor the power of his sceptre 
that gave him content. Such things do not work in 
this way. What we term success, — alas ! it is now 
about our only conception of it, — namely, getting 
money, may be an element of contentment, but only 
as oxygen is an element of vital air. It burns up 
contentment unless mixed and tempered by other ele- 
ments. Not from without, but evermore from the 
heart, are the issues of life. When there is peace 
and order within, an honest conscience, a true hu- 
mility, a sincere contrition, a clear mind, a trained 
judgment, a benevolent spirit, a brave will, a pro- 
found faith, there may be a full contentment. I 
know that it is hard to go without, hard to be stripped 
of gains, hard to face age in poverty, and no man 
should who can properly avoid it. " This wise world 
is mainly right," and putting that thing we call sub- 
stance or wealth between one's self and the world 
is a good part of the business of life. But there is 
something that every wise man, in these days, needs 
to learn more than how to get rich, and that is how 
to go without riches. All the energies of the age 



74 LIFE NOT VANITY. 

are being sucked into this vortex, and mind for 
mind's sake, learning for learning's sake, art and 
science and the nobler ideals of faith, — these are 
going by default. Contentment, personal peace, na- 
tional prosperity, will not come by this fullness of 
bread that we are seeking. 

This Psalm also may be said to take a healthy 
view of life. 

It is used and well used as a word for the dying, 
but there is not a morbid note in it. It is full of 
strong, calm, steady life, life that is sound and nor- 
mal, and that is why the dying lean upon it ; it puts 
the cup of life afresh to their lips. 

It is an utterance specially fitted for these days 
when life is suspected, questioned if it is good, 
if the game is worth the candle, if the Preacher's 
vanity of vanities is not its real key, if earnestness 
and devotion and reality are not dreams of a mis- 
taken past. The age undoubtedly runs to sadness ; 
to pleasure, indeed, and therefore to sadness, for plea- 
sure comes to an end ; to excitement, and therefore 
again to sadness, for excitement tires and reacts ; to 
strife and incessant toil, and therefore still more to 
sadness, for these forces spend themselves, and leave 
mind and heart without a vocation. Philosophy 
finds evil, and, knowing not what to do with it, 
curses God in pessimistic despair. Literature catches 
its tone and settles into hard realism, or floats away 
into sentimentality, reflecting the two moods of so- 
ciety. Science faces a dissolving world, and, see- 
ing no other, drives men to that saddest of all con- 
clusions, " Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we 



LIFE NOT VANITY. 75 

die." It is said that disease tends to a typhoid or 
low type, and intellectual and social health seems to 
share in the same tendency. Life is hurried, rest- 
less, tired ; it tends to despondency. The poets are 
sad and self-conscious ; the look is introspective, to 
the small world of self, and not to the great world 
outside. The thought of the day is analytic, taking 
in pieces this framework of man and society that we 
are, and not synthetic, creating anew in thought the 
cosmos of the eternal order ; hence our minds are 
held down to the partial or seeming evil, and not 
lifted to the universal good for which all things work 
together. Analyze man or society, and you will find 
enough evil, but put them together, set man in all 
his relations, get down to the resultant of the forces 
of society, and you will catch sight of a total good. 

The materialism of the age helps on this tendency 
to sadness. The economists are telling us that the 
main thing is to prosper, to get money, to improve 
our condition, and by all means to " get on." This 
is success, — to be rich, to live in ceiled houses and 
wear fine raiment and fare sumptuously every day. 
But this path is thorny and steep and full of pit- 
falls, and so, after stumbling on for a time we find 
ourselves pierced through with many sorrows and 
wallowing in deep pits of failure, — for not all can 
come to Dives' table, — we begin to complain and to 
charge our disappointment to the world we are in. 
It is a rough world ; stretch me no longer on its rack. 
I thought I was to ride through life, and here I am 
plodding along the dusty way with weary feet. I 
thought I was to reap rich success ; the wise told me 



76 LIFE NOT VANITY. 

how, and lo ! my hands are empty ; the world is bad 
and life is a delusion. Nor do the rich fare much 
better. The walls are fair, the cushions are easy, 
the linen is fine, the table is bountiful, but Dives is 
not happy. When men mistake life, the discovery 
of the mistake breeds sadness ; mistake is essential 
sadness. 

The fresh liberty of modern times just now works in 
the same direction. Whatever else tyranny and fixed 
custom did for or against men, it held them steady ; 
it kept them to rigid and close ways of living, and 
the very necessity bred a sort of peace and content. 
But modern liberty and independence, modern indi- 
vidualism, open to every man the way to all the mis- 
takes he is capable of ; his freedom has not yet been 
moulded by intelligence and long experience. Hence, 
on every hand we see the sad tokens of unguided 
life. It will work itself clear in time, but mean- 
while it is turbid with half-knowledge and ill-used 
privilege. Never before was there such prosperity. 
What an age and what a country is this ! How 
good our houses, how fine our clothing, how gen- 
erous our food, what art for our eyes, what music 
for our ears, what comfort in travel, what ease at 
home ! Our whole external life, — how safe and 
orderly and well-proportioned ! But it has no cor- 
responding zest ; it fades for most of us and changes 
color long before its autumn ; it grows insipid and 
sinks into low estimate ; its psalm is not keyed to 
joy, but wails in minor strains ; our cup does not 
run over ; goodness and mercy do not follow us from 
day to day with their conscious blessing. This 



LIFE NOT VANITY. 77 

Psalm of David's is the reverse of this : it covers 
all our days, but it is cheerful ; it takes in death 
and trouble, but it is not morbid ; it embraces pros- 
perity, but there is no reaction of satiety, no weari- 
ness or disgust. 

But such a view of life must have its root in some- 
thing that feeds it; it proceeds upon something; 
there are causes and forces that shape the conclu- 
sion. Let us see what they are. 

It presents life as under God. The Lord is my 
Shepherd. Man is not a wild beast in a solitary 
den, with no friend but nature and no law but its 
own ravening appetite ; he belongs to a higher order 
that has its life under a personal Will ; he lives in 
relations to a superior Mind aud Heart. 

Freedom is a good thing, but it is freedom under 
law and a Law-giver; peace comes by obedience. 
Individualism may be the goal of human destiny ; 
man is to become a king, but a king unto God, a 
priest at his own altar and to all humanity, but first 
and evermore unto God. Man will not rule over 
himself and have peace in the dominion of his soul 
except as he bows under an eternal sceptre. He 
will never be a servant of humanity except as he is 
the servant of God. Man is not happy in himself, 
but only in God. " Thou hast made us, and we 
have no peace till we have it in thee." This ecstatic 
cry of Augustine is soundest logic. Being made by 
God and set in relations to him, we do not know 
ourselves, nor can we adjust ourselves to our rela- 
tions until we know God. David's life could be 



78 LIFE NOT VANITY. 

turned into a psalm of peaceful content, because 
God was over it, and a guiding Shepherd throughout 
it. Such a fact makes room for the play of trust, 
without which life is a sad perplexity. For I can- 
not understand life ; I cannot of myself find out 
why I am, nor whence I came, nor for what end ; I 
cannot explain why this and that happen to me ; I 
may see some cause, but no full reason or end ; a 
cause is not a reason. By myself I am lost in this 
world, without paths except the circles of a clueless 
labyrinth, without stars of guidance except such as 
wander across the heavens, without light except that 
which only deepens the darkness. Now in such a 
state as this, I must either stray through life in sad 
perplexity, or I must trust God for a way. In such 
trust the most painful features of life, its mystery, its 
seeming vanity, its pain and burden and disappoint- 
ment, its untimely end, its mischance, its inevitable 
contact with evil, lose their force. I am not bound 
to explain them; I may refer them to God, upon 
whom is the responsibility. I need not bear them 
in their naked form as evil, but in trusting God I 
trust a greater encompassing good, and may there- 
fore believe that they are shaped for good. For 
only in a small sense do we make our lives; they 
are made for us. I am put within certain bounds 
of time, place, parentage, society, and this environ- 
ment is by far the largest part of my life. I have 
liberty within it, enough to make me accountable, 
but I touch the inclosing walls every moment, and 
their binding constraint seems to me only evil until 
I can say, " God put them about me and for some 
good end." 



LIFE NOT VANITY. 79 

This matter goes very deep and touches every one 
of us in a practical way, being simply the question 
whether we shall solve the problems, bear the bur- 
dens, and endure the evil of life alone, or whether 
we shall refer them to him who gave us life and 
put us where we are. 

This Psalm takes what may be called the synthetic 
view of life ; that is, it regards it as a whole. It is 
not an analysis of life, dividing it up, setting each 
part and feature by itself, counting certain things 
good and certain evil, marking some days with red 
letters and others with black. It gives life instead 
a certain cast of universality ; it makes it all one ; 
the Lord is always leading it as a shepherd ; good- 
ness and mercy follow it continually ; it is forever 
in God's house. It would have been a sad and fool- 
ish thing for David, as it is for any man, to set 
about analyzing his life ; it could not bear the 
strain ; the evil and the sorrow would have held his 
thought, and outweighed the good. But taken as a 
whole, the colors supplemented and melted into each 
other, and left a picture that he could look at with 
peace. It is so with us all. None of us can take 
any year or day, or even hour, and pronounce it per- 
fect. But as we look over the whole, we see that 
a general purpose of good overspreads it, and also 
that its general outcome is good. Its tendency has 
been to make us wiser, steadier, more patient and 
sympathetic, more obedient to law, more content with 
the things that are, and more hopeful. It is also well 
to see how one feature or experience of life plays use- 



80 LIFE NOT VANITY. 

fully into another, how limitation works toward free- 
dom, how a sickness or any other set-back contributes 
to some large good. "I was ill, and lost a whole 
month." Yes, but you earned some coin of patience, 
some gain of human sympathy, some profit of wis- 
dom. One part of life feeds another ; hence we must 
not weigh its parts, but the whole. One reason why 
men are now complaining of life is their hungry de- 
mand for instant and incessant pleasure ; the cup of 
enjoyment must be filled every day. Amuse me, 
excite me, crown me to-day, is the cry. But as this 
cannot happen, the plan being rather to build man 
up into a being capable of holding happiness, men 
turn away in disgust, not discerning how and for 
what end they are made. 

We must hold resolutely, as this Psalm does, to 
the truth that life is joy. " It does not seem so," you 
say; "it seems quite otherwise." Very likely, and so 
it will be while you trust in appearances rather than 
in principles. You say, " I have only appearances to 
go by." But suppose you take appearances, and try 
to construct out of them a theory of life ; to explain 
life by its aspects and temporary features. You 
cannot thus find out that it is either good or bad ; it 
will be a puzzle and a contradiction , Try instead 
principles ; assume character as a means and joy as 
an end, and see if life is not plain as a printed page. 
We cannot think broadly on this subject without 
coming to see that joy is the end of existence. The 
secret of the universe is blessedness. Any other con- 
ception is treachery. By any other theory we are 



LIFE NOT VANITY. 81 

betrayed creatures. If it is not so, then we know not 
what is or is not, and it matters little. We are sen- 
tient beings ; this is fundamental truth, and it pre- 
supposes joy as its realization. There is a negative 
side, — the possibility of the opposite ; but this is 
the great positive possibility, the thing for which we 
are made, the atmosphere we are to breathe, the 
essence by which we live. It has its laws and its 
method. Christ taught nothing higher or more cen- 
tral ; he had for himself no other motive than the 
joy set before him and it was never less than full. 
It turns indeed on character ; only the faithful ser- 
vant enters into it, but setting this view aside, it is 
well to get it thoroughly wrought into us that exis- 
tence is joy, that life is " bathed in it as an ether," 
and has no other true atmosphere. This is central 
truth ; we must resolutely believe it, and so far as 
may be live it, or, if that is difficult, live towards 
it. If I am wretched, I am involved in some mis- 
take, — my own or another's. If I am despondent, 
I am off the track of life. If existence has no zest, 
some poison has got into the cup. If I am led to 
deny that life is good, I change it into such a mass 
of contradiction and absurdity that it turns on me 
and forbids me to think or assert anything of it. If 
I am letting it fade out into a dull, insipid thing, I 
am falling away from the only heritage I have. 

It is the duty and privilege of all to work away 
from sorrow and gloom and dullness towards joy. I 
know what griefs come to us, — Rachel weeping for 
her children because they are not, fathers broken- 
hearted over dead Absaloms. I know how shut in 



82 LIFE NOT VANITY. 

and pressed down many of you are, how vast your 
desires and how small your portion ; what dead- 
weights of shame and tender sorrow hang on you ; 
what physical ailments, what lack of training, what 
force of evil habit, what clamor of appetite, what 
memory of evil, what earthiness of spirit, what infir- 
mities of temper, shut you off from this world of joy. 
Still, you are to work towards it. Tears must flow 
and the head must bow in shame for a while, but 
when nature and conscience have had their due, 
turn once more to life, knowing it to be good. 

Much might be said on the wisdom of taking a con- 
stantly fresh view of life. It is one of the moral uses 
of the night that it gives the world anew to us every 
morning, and of sleep that it makes life a daily 
re-creation. If we always saw the world, we might 
grow weary of it. If a third of life were not spent 
in unconsciousness, the rest might become tedious. 
God is thus all the while presenting the cup of life 
afresh to our lips. Thus after a night of peaceful 
sleep, we behold the world as new and fresh and 
wonderful as it was on the first morning of creation, 
when God pronounced it " very good." And sleep 
itself has a divine alchemy that gives us to ourselves 
with our primitive energy of body and mind. The 
da} r s are not mere repetitions of themselves ; to-mor- 
row will have another meaning ; I shall come to it 
with larger vision than I have to-day. 

And then, how grandly life is unrolling at present ! 
Knowledge gives to our minds almost a new world 
every year. How rapidly is man climbing into his 
throne of earthly supremacy, subduing nature, yoking 



LIFE NOT VANITY. 83 

its forces to his will, getting all things under his 
hand ! And how fast is humanity unfolding the 
greater mysteries of social life, coming to a knowl- 
edge of itself, finding out its la vs, and getting so- 
ciety into shape ; government, philosophy, science, 
all working together for humanity ! ■ Almost every 
day visible advance is made, — changes that are 
enough to set us agape with delighted wonder. The 
world is not dull except as we have dull eyes. It is 
a vain conceit, " a want- wit sadness," that tempts us 
to think we have exhausted it, that life has nothing 
more to offer. There are times, indeed, when its 
whole value and significance is taken away, dropped 
down into a grave deeper and wider to us than the 
whole world, swept out on the flood of disaster, 
turned into blackness by sinful shame ; there are 
defects and losses and mistakes that induce weari- 
ness, and lead us to hold the world " a stage where 
every man must play a part, and mine a sad one." 

But wait awhile, and look about you and above. 
The sun shines still ; there is no change in the notes 
of nature. The blessed order of growth goes on. 
Humanity keeps on its upward way ; God is leading 
it as a shepherd, and you are a part of it, and he is 
leading you, — not just now by still waters, but 
through the valley of shadows, — and would comfort 
you with his staff, show you what it all means and 
where it ends. Wait thus awhile, and you will find 
that you are still in God's house, and not in a dark 
and orderless world. 

And so I say, in conclusion, think well of life and 



84 LIFE NOT VANITY. 

the world. To suspect and question life, to hold it 
cheap, to use it listlessly or sadly, — this is treachery, 
this is folly. For what else have we but life, what 
other heritage, what other standing-ground ; what 
else is there to hold us or anything that we have ? 
To cheapen it, or hold it indifferently, or treat it 
scornfully, — this is the folly of one who smites and 
impoverishes himself. 

This life of ours, just as it is, is so beautiful and 
glorious that we can imagine it offered to some 
newly created being of intelligence for acceptance 
or rejection, all its good and evil plainly set before 
him. As he looks it over, sees its plan and purpose, 
the joy woven into it, its marvelous growth, its hero- 
ism and strength, sees how it rises and presses to- 
wards God and the glory of God, how its evil works 
toward good, how divine love throbs through it, and 
divine power is under and over it, we can imagine 
him crying, " Put me into that world ; let me live 
that life and earn its joy." 

Even so did the Psalmist regard it when he cried 
in the fullness of his content : " I will dwell in the 
house of the Lord forever." 



THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY. 



" Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss, 
And let that pine to aggravate thy store ; 
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross ; 
Within be fed, without be rich no more.' ' 

Shakespeare, Sonnet cxlvi. 

" Life, — strong life and sound life, — that life which lends ap- 
proaches to the Infinite and takes hold on heaven, is not so much 
a progress as it is a resistance." — North British Review. 

' ' Kant makes virtue consist in self-government, Schleiermacher 
in self -development ; the former makes virtue a struggle, the latter 
a harmony. They form the outermost sea-marks of the great ocean 
of moral speculations, and the whole tide in different ages has rolled 
backwards and forwards between them." — Review. 

"In the life of the church, as in all the moral life of mankind, 
there are two distinct ideals, either of which it is possible to follow, 
— two conceptions, under one or the other of which we may repre- 
sent to ourselves man's effort after the better life. The ideal of 
asceticism represents that moral effort as essentially a sacrifice of 
one part of human nature to another, that it may live in what sur- 
vives more completely ; while the ideal of culture represents it as a 
harmonious development of all the parts of human nature, in just 
proportion to each other." — Walter Pater, Marius, the Epicu- 
rean, vol. ii. p. 136. 

" The essential peculiarity of the Christian life is, that it is the 
complete harmony, the absolute synthesis, of both kinds of good- 
ness." — Kev. James Freeman Clarke, D. D. 



THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY. 



And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abun- 
dance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, 
the messenger of Satan, to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above 
measure. — 2 Corinthians xii. 7. 

I think a good life of St. Paul would be the best 
possible exponent of Christian experience. I do not 
mean an external biography, for that we have ; but 
a full transcript of his thoughts and feelings. If St. 
Paul had written confidential letters to a friend ; if 
he had kept a sincere diary, if St. Luke had written 
down his conversation as they sat on deck in sea- 
voyages or traveled up and down in Asia, what a 
priceless treasure would have fallen to the church, — 
what a revelation of the Christian faith every be- 
liever would have had ! But we have this in a 
greater degree than we suppose. These epistles of 
his are not theological treatises but genuine letters 
from one man to other men, full of personal feeling 
and experience, and not impersonal generalizations 
of truth ; they show how the man Paul took in the 
gospel and how it worked in and through him. His 
personal experience is valuable because it was so 
natural. It was not clogged and colored by dogmatic 
and ecclesiastical notions such as enter into nearly 



88 THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY. 

all later lives. The Christian Fathers undoubtedly 
have much to tell us in regard to Christian truth, 
but great allowance must be made for ecclesiasti- 
cism, which is no part of Christianity and is a great 
modifier of it. But in St. Paul there was nothing 
between him and the source of his faith ; he felt 
and thought in response to a close and full vision of 
Christ. This truth worked in a great nature and in 
powerful ways; the lesson is large, and the move- 
ment of his mind is like the blowing of winds or the 
tread of armies. 

This experience of the thorn in the flesh is both 
interesting and valuable, or would be, if we could 
come at it. But it has been buried under such a 
mass of comment and conjecture that the simple les- 
sons it contains are hard to reach. The main object 
seems to have been to discover what the exact nature 
of the thorn was. The strife is typical of much 
study of the Bible, — infinite scrutiny of the form 
without much thought of the end. Now it matters 
little what the thorn in the flesh was ; but how it 
pierced the apostle, how he bore it, and how it af- 
fected him are the real questions. Still it may be 
well to refer to these various theories, if for nothing 
else than to get rid of them. They have been of 
several kinds, and all have been urged with skill and 
force. 

One is that it consisted in spiritual trials, — some- 
thing that directly assailed his principles and faith. 
The view taken by the writers in the Eomish Church 
is that he was beset by sensual temptations. This 
is the natural view of men who have turned their 



THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY. 89 

whole lives into a needless conflict with the passions. 
What is bitterest and hardest to be put away by 
them must have been the particular trial of the apos- 
tle ; so it is easy to think. His own description of 
it forbids us to accept this explanation ; for, having 
prayed that it might depart from him, he concludes 
to abide by it and bear it as best he may, getting 
from it some compensating spiritual return. But he 
would not have treated a sensual temptation in this 
way. No good man says of such action of his na- 
ture : " It is my cross ; I must bear it patiently," 
and ceases to pray against it. Not patient acqui- 
escence, but unending conflict, is the rule here. 
Luther keenly and tenderly says of this view, " Ah, 
no, dear Paul, it was not that manner of temptation 
that troubled thee." 

Another interpretation is that it was a temptation 
to unbelief. But as little would St. Paul have ac- 
quiesced in this. Doubt is indeed a thorn that pierces 
deep. To have a mind made to know God, and yet 
not be able to find him ; to hunger after the truth, 
and yet not be sure of truth ; to have eyes that 
rejoice in the light, and yet catch only glimpses, — 
this is well-nigh the keenest suffering a true man 
can feel. But it was not a temptation from which 
St. Paul suffered. He was preeminently and always 
a believer, a man of convictions. There was no ces- 
sation of belief when he drew nigh to Damascus ; 
there was no increase of belief as he entered its 
gates ; it had simply taken a new direction. We do 
not find in him any indication of that wavering and 
puzzled state of mind known as skepticism, — a que- 



90 THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY. 

rying if all things may not be a delusion, a fear lest 
more light or wider experience may dispel present 
faith. From first to last St. Paul was a mighty be- 
liever, — "I know whom I have believed." No; 
St. Paul did not feel the ranklings of this thorn. 

Another explanation is that he suffered from re- 
morse for his past life, and especially for his part in 
the death of Stephen. But St. Paul had too true a 
conception of the gospel to give way to such a feel- 
ing. Remorse is one of the black and fearful things 
the gospel undertakes to destroy. It belongs to that 
worldly kingdom which the kingdom of heaven dis- 
places. It is indeed according to nature to keep 
alive remorse for evil deeds, and the finer the spirit 
the more bitterly will one regard one's offenses. 
As such a spirit grows better, the more keenly will 
remorse bite it, outmastering the dulling power of 
time, and haunting the conscience with deathless 
power. When the noble CEdipus discovered his un- 
meant crimes, he put out his eyes, so that he might 
never behold in this world, nor in the next, the be- 
ings he had unwittingly sinned against : for that he 
had sinned unwittingly was no excuse to himself, nor 
did it assuage his remorse. This is the religion of 
mere nature, — evil generating endless sorrow in a 
pure heart. But the gospel reverses this process; it 
is a revelation of a love that forgives ; it blots out ; 
it washes away ; it destroys the past ; and so ends 
the wild play of remorse. It is a great and appar- 
ently hazardous thing thus to interfere between a 
man's evil and its penalty, to shut him off from its 
natural feeling. " Better let him suffer and learn," 



THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY. 91 

we say. But there is a gracious audacity in the 
gospel that dares to take a ruan out of the natural 
order of sin and penalty and remorse, and says, " I 
can save him in his integrity without remorse, if he 
will but let me have my way with him." St. Paul 
well understood all this. He did not forget Stephen, 
and the memory kept him humble, but it did not 
haunt him with remorse ; it was no thorn piercing 
him in this way. 

Another interpretation is that it was some external 
trial. The greatest trial, undoubtedly, he ever en- 
countered was the opposition of the Judaizing party 
in the churches ; and it never departed from him. 
He endured their relentless opposition to the end, 
and he fought them to the last, foreseeing that if 
they should prevail the church woidd share in the 
fate of the nation. This party had all those charac- 
teristics that have so often been repeated in the his- 
tory of the church : blind adhesion to the past ; the 
mistake of supposing that what is old is therefore 
venerable, and what is new is therefore dangerous ; 
insensibility to the fact that God is continually re- 
vealing himself in new forms ; exalting the letter 
above the spirit ; dullness of spiritual vision ; obsti- 
nacy mistaken for principle, and all penetrated with 
a hard, relentless spirit towards those who disagree 
with them. These things do not belong to one age, 
but ever hang on the skirts of God's advancing 
Church, a part of it in appearance, but in reality the 
antichrist. This party denied that St. Paul was an 
apostle, and that he had any right to speak for the 
church ; it thwarted his influence, it slandered his 



92 THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY. 

character, it misconstrued his motives and conduct, 
and all in the interest of what it called religion. 
This party insisted on retaining the Jewish rites; St. 
Paul determined to cut free from them, and to get 
the faith out of a provincial form into such shape 
that any Greek or Roman could take it at once into 
his reason and conscience without the entanglements 
of purely national customs. It was a life-long battle, 
in which the apostle won, or won at least the ends 
of victory, but it was a bitter conflict. It is to St. 
Paul that we are indebted for a gospel and a church 
universal in character, without local or temporal 
features, — a religion of the spirit and of freedom. 
But this conflict was not the thorn in his flesh ; this 
was something more personal, something apart from 
his general work. The thorn was for his personal 
benefit, to counteract a special fault or tendency, an 
offset to what may be termed an excessive action of 
the spiritual nature. But it was of no advantage to 
St. Paul to encounter in every church he had formed 
a sanctimonious set — half stupid and half malicious 
— who attempted to put him down by clamoring for 
the good old Jewish ways ; thus making it appear 
that he was devoid of piety and that they were full 
of it. This was a trial that could do him no good, 
nor correct any evil tendency in him ; it simply 
worried and tired him. 

It is thought by some that the thorn in the flesh 
was the physical persecutions he endured. But St. 
Paul elsewhere treats these experiences in a differ- 
ent way ; they unite him to Christ ; they are taken 
joyfully, and endured bravely, — a part of his lot as 
a soldier of Jesus. 



THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY. 93 

We come nearer the probable truth in the sug- 
gestion that it was some physical ailment or infir- 
mity. If the force of words is to be regarded, it is 
the flesh, the body, that suffers. There is something 
pathetic, and at the same time almost humorous, in 
the way in which suffering commentators have laid 
their ailments on the apostle. They have attributed 
to him diseases ranging from epilepsy to weakness 
of the eyes. Others insist on some personal defect, 
and their guesses have ranged from an insignificant 
personal appearance to a habit of stammering. The 
commentator finds some phrase in an epistle that 
bears him out, and so transfers to the apostle his 
own infirmity, — a trembling hand, a stammering 
tongue, weakened eyes, an unwinniug address. 
Amusing, but more pathetic ! What better can 
we do with some hindering infirmity or humiliating 
weakness than to bring it into such company, — 
drawn on in the simple delusion by the thought 
that if we share in the weakness of the great apostle, 
we may also share in his strength. It is some com- 
fort to the preacher who stammers before an ungra- 
cious audience, or speaks with features distorted by 
nervous twitching, to think that it was even so with 
St. Paul. These hearts of ours are fond in their 
foolishness, and we are not quite strong enough to 
bear our trials alone. It takes something from pain 
to know that a great man has borne it ; something 
from shame to know that one better than ourselves 
has felt it. 

It is, however, now quite generally understood 
that by the thorn in the flesh St. Paul meant some 



94 THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY. 

nervous ailment, fitful or constant, that detracted 
from his personal appearance and influence, and 
shut him off from the fields where he most desired 
to act. Thus it was both a humiliation and a grief 
to him. Further than this we ought not to go in 
our investigation, for the simple reason that St. Paul 
saw fit to take us no further into the privacy of his 
personal history. He was a man of too much re- 
finement to speak of his disease in a close way, and 
it is not delicate in us to press our inquiries in that 
direction. It is a mean and vulgar characteristic of 
an age which deems itself refined that it leaves no 
privacy about any life. No great man dies but every 
confidential utterance and personal habit is dragged 
into light, and if a pathological history of his body 
can be added, so much the better ; or rather, so 
much the worse, for this invasion of personal life is 
neither nice nor wise. St. Paul did not see fit to 
tell us from what disease he suffered, and so we will 
not attempt to fix it, even if we have the data. It 
was enough for his purpose, it is enough for ours, 
that we know he suffered from some incurable phys- 
ical ailment, which was of such a nature in its effect 
and persistence that it became to him a source of 
spiritual strength. 

If the real significance of the thorn in the flesh 
were put in a general way, it would be : physical evil 
a condition of spiritual strength. Such a thought at 
once stirs up question and denial. It seems to be 
contrary to the thought of the day ; it looks off to- 
wards old-time asceticism, and to an ungenerous view 
of human life. 



THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY. 95 

I put it in a general way rather than as a definite 
assertion, for as an assertion it needs to be largely 
qualified. It is a hazardous thing to claim that 
physical evil is of any true value to us. Can evil 
teach or bring us any good ? Is there anything to 
be done with evil except to get rid of it? Is not a 
sound body the condition of a sane mind and also of 
a sane spirit ? Are not body and spirit so related 
that if one is distempered the other is also ? Affir- 
mative answers to these questions may justly be 
expected. The matter becomes more puzzling when 
we remember that Christianity has for one of its 
ends the destruction of physical evil. It distinctly 
prophesies that there shall be no more pain." 
One of the most illuminating aspects in which Christ 
stood before men was as healing their diseases. If 
evil is a factor of good, if physical infirmity helps 
the moral nature, why does Christ set himself up 
as its destroyer? 

Puzzling questions, I grant, which I cannot now 
stop to discuss as problems, but will speak of only 
in a practical light. Despite all that may be said 
with such force and justness on the other side, as a 
matter of fact we know that we get a great deal of 
good out of our evil. Suffering is a thing to be put 
out of the world as fast as knowledge and humanity 
can do it. There is not a diviner work man can do 
than to lessen pain, if he does it by destroying the 
cause ; and yet pain teaches lessons of supreme value. 
One of the largest factors in any wise man's educa- 
tion is the mistake and misfortune and suffering of 
one kind and another that he has undergone. I am 



96 THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY. 

aware into what a tangle such assertions lead us: 
evil to be put away, and yet necessary to virtue ; 
evil, the child of ignorance, and yet the school of 
knowledge ; pain, the fruit of sin and mistake, and 
yet the nurse of spiritual life ; that which you must 
avoid the condition of what you must have. Here 
is contradiction and absurdity enough so long as 
we treat the subject in a speculative way, but 
when turned into facts they vanish. There is no 
contradiction between fact and philosophy, but we 
must remember that no theory of life covers life. 
We can always appeal from philosophy to life, from 
the explanation to the fact. In some higher court, 
in some age or world of clearer light, theory and 
fact will come into harmony. Meanwhile we must 
go by facts and let our theories wait, even if they 
mock us with accusations of folly. 

Following the strict line of our subject, I speak 
now of the moral effect of bodily infirmity. 

It cuts up our conceit and pride. It wrought 
in this way in St. Paul. One might ask, What is 
the relation between this pride in spiritual revela- 
tions and physical infirmity, so that one subdues the 
other ? There is no natural bond, no traceable path, 
by which influence travels from one to the other ; 
and yet we all know, as a matter of experience, that 
bodily infirmity is a very humbling thing. The cen- 
tral principle of pride and conceit is self -strength, — 
a strength without relations ; the man fails to see 
that his excellence is a derived thing, that it comes 
to him from without. And this is what makes it 
evil and fit to be named selfish, for self is its central 
principle. 



THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY. 97 

Now, nothing strikes such a blow at self as an 
experience of physical infirmity or suffering. Pain 
is a great humbler ; weakness a still greater. When 
one is groaning from physical suffering, one does not 
indulge in self - gratulation. When a man cannot 
walk, he ceases to be proud. The pain and weakness 
reach far beyond the body, and strike at the mind 
and spirit. There is no logical reason why, when I 
suffer, I should be humble, but I am, — no reason, 
unless, indeed, this body was made to play upon 
the soul and teach it lessons. These lessons are not 
always lasting, but they are more so than we are apt 
to think; they exercise a general repressive influ- 
ence. Our chief sin is pride, and our best grace is 
humility, — " mother of all virtues." Human life is 
ordered largely for keeping down one and fostering 
the other. Were pride not checked here and there, 
on every side and continually, it would destroy us. 
" He that is proud eats up himself," says the great 
moralist. Hence even the body is commissioned to 
aid in keeping it down, for the body has one strong 
hand that touches the spiritual nature, and when 
the body lapses into weakness it drags the soul 
wholesomely into the dust with it. 

Bodily infirmity teaches a man to go carefully in 
this world of mischance, — this world from which 
chaos is not yet wholly expunged ; it coordinates him 
to an uncertain world. Nothing is truer than that 
we know not what a day may bring forth. The 
main feature of human life is its uncertainty. There 
are great laws that carry it on and point to sure 
phases and conclusions, but there are also occult 



98 THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY. 

laws and disturbing forces whose results cannot be 
calculated. I do not know what will happen to me to- 
morrow ; I may not even be in this world to-morrow. 
And while I ought to live and act as though to-mor- 
row were to be spent here, it is equally true that I 
ought to live and act as though I were not to be here 
to-morrow. We must not leave the uncertain feature 
out of life. But man tends to make himself at home 
here ; to live as though he were to stay here forever. 
He builds, and gathers in, and heaps up, and says, 
" Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many 
years ; take thine ease, eat, drink, be merry ; " not 
remembering that God may this night require his 
soul. There is indeed a great deal to make one feel 
safe and sure in this world. The heavens do not 
change and the earth abides forever. There is a tre- 
mendous assertion of life in our hearts that does not 
readily give way to a sense of mortality. It is not 
easy for any of us to realize that here " we have no 
abiding city," and that we must " soon fly away ; " 
we can be made to feel it only through the body. 
It is by the body that we are linked to this sure 
order of nature and the world, and it must be by 
the body that we are taught we do not belong to 
nature and the world. Providence at times weakens 
and almost breaks the links of this chain to show 
that it will not forever hold us. When one is pros- 
trated by sickness, or when one carries about a 
withered limb, or when some organ of the body 
does its duty imperfectly and gives token of it in 
pain and weakness, one realizes the frailty of that 
which holds him here. 



THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY. 99 

It is well for us to know this, to be taught how 
frail we are. For it is not well to live in the world 
as though we were to stay in it forever ; if it were, 
we should stay forever. We are not citizens here, 
but sojourners. We " tarry but a night." The 
places that now know us will soon know us no 
more. These are facts and features of human 
life, which it is not well to forget ; for if forgotten 
we get to feel that earth is our home, and so grow 
earthly in our thoughts, and take on earthly hues. 
The immortal and eternal colors fade out, and we 
become mere denizens of the world, subdued to its 
complexion and quality. 

Physical infirmity reveals to a man the fact that 
he himself is not a source of power, and the more 
general truth that the power of the world is outside 
of him ; in other words, it teaches him that he is a 
dependent being. 

Man undoubtedly has power, and the conscious- 
ness of it leads him to assert and maintain his place 
as the head of creation. There is not an animal but 
man is consciously its master ; there is not a force 
that he is not bringing under his control. We 
speak of subduing nature. There is an instinctive 
feeling that we should have the mastery of the earth, 
and as a preliminary we are exploring it and 
discovering its peculiarities, mapping its deserts, 
sounding and dredging its seas, piercing its arctic 
darkness, and threading its labyrinths of tropical 
growth. Man is all the while striving in ways that 
express his power. There is an end of utility which 
is an excuse, but the real motive, the passion of his 



100 THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY. 

labors, is to express his mastery. The pyramids 
were built for tombs, but back of this purpose lay 
the passion for achievement. The bridge that 
connects New York and Brooklyn — perhaps the 
greatest material work ever wrought — has for its 
object an easy and quick transit from one city 
to the other, but the inspiring force behind it was 
this undaunted and indomitable pride in achieve- 
ment : here was something fit to be done ; the difficul- 
ties were immense, but their very immensity was the 
reason they were overcome. The human mind brooks 
no challenge that implies weakness, and it is the 
glory of man that he does not admit an impossibility. 
If he cannot yet find a way, he conquers in his 
dreams. Thus he is insensibly led to pride himself 
on his power. What is so glorious to him as an intel- 
lectual being becomes a temptation to him morally. 
For, whether we understand it or not, when a man 
gets to feel that he is of himself a power, that he 
can do for the most part whatever he undertakes, he 
suffers injury in the region of the spirit. This sense 
of power generates a feeling of independence that 
closes the avenues of sympathy and mutual depen- 
dence which connect him with his fellows, and he be- 
comes selfish, and proud, and hard. The temptation 
of wealth lies in the sense of power it begets ; it tends 
to relieve its owner of that sense of dependence 
which is the basis of sympathy. There is nothing 
grander than this sense of power, but it carries with 
it a corresponding moral danger, and so it is a thing 
to be kept in check. Now, the logical way of re- 
straining this tendency, the absolute method, is by 



THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY. 101 

knowledge, thought. But man has not yet come 
to that point ; the strong man is not yet wise enough 
to think himself into a true humility. The time 
may come when he will not need an outside discipline 
to correct his faults, but that day has not yet dawned. 
Nothing so well restrains the undue action of our 
nature in this direction as bodily infirmity. It 
has an empirical look ; it seems like making a bad 
thing serve a good end. But for all that it is true. 
The whole relation of body to mind has an empirical 
look ; there is nothing more illogical and unreason- 
able than the influence of the body upon the mind, 
that an aching limb should determine the quality of 
thought, but it is a fact, and facts are what we have 
to do with. 

It is a magnificent thing for a man to have this 
sense of power, to feel that nothing on earth can 
stop the play of the mighty energies that throb with 
his blood, — a glorious thing, but dangerous. For 
his highest and complete good, a man must also 
know that he is weak and has no power. For in 
this feeling his sense of dependence upon God and 
fellow-men comes into play ; and this is more and 
better than the sense of strength, which is always 
whispering, " Ye shall become as gods." We are 
not gods, and it is not well to think we are. We 
may be the head of creation, but we are not the 
head of all things. There is nothing that so surely 
and thoroughly undoes character as the belief that 
there is no power and intelligence above us, that we 
head the column of existence. Hence the most 
violent and arbitrary checks are put in the way of 



102 THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY. 

such thinking ; badges of weakness are wrought 
into our very body. We cannot forego a moment's 
breath of air ; gravitation breaks our bones by a 
little fall ; a misdirected atom clogs the life-current ; 
a slight rise of the temperature of the body and 
great Caesar " cries like a sick girl." We gird the 
earth with our railways and telegraphs, but all the 
while an impalpable gas is eating away our life. 
When we realize this, we change our tone of exult- 
ing strength for one of humble dependence which we 
feel to be truer and really higher. 

An experience of physical infirmity gives one a 
certain wholesome contempt of material things. 

As I say this, I hasten to qualify and explain it. 
Nothing that God has made is to be despised ; least 
of all this body that now holds us. It has in it all 
the wonder and glory of creation, and is an epitome 
of all previous creations, — a harp of more than a 
thousand strings : so strong that it can level moun- 
tains; so fine that in its automatic skill it almost 
thinks; so nearly spiritual that we cannot see 
where sense joins thought ; so coarsely material that 
chemical law runs riot in it ; a mere forge for the 
fire of oxygen, yet so delicate that it reflects in every 
turn and gesture the spirit and temper of the mind ; 
so one with us that if it is sound we can hardly fail 
of being happy, and if it is weak we can hardly fail 
of being miserable ; so one with us that we cannot 
think of ourselves as separate from it, yet are con- 
scious that it is no part of us, — such a thing as 
this is not to be despised nor treated otherwise than 
as sacred. We have hardly any more imperative 



THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY. 103 

work than to secure for the body its highest possi- 
ble vigor and health. How to feed and clothe and 
house it ; how to use it ; how to keep it safe from 
weakening and poisonous gases ; how to secure that 
rhythmic action of its functions that turns physical 
existence into music, — this is the immediate ques- 
tion before civilization, the discussion of which will 
drive out much of the vice of society and revolution- 
ize its systems of education. The gospel of the body 
is yet to be heard and heeded. But this gospel will 
go no further than to require such care and treatment 
of the body that it shall best serve the uses of the 
mind. It is worthy of the greatest care, but only 
that it may be the most supple and ready servant of 
our real self. It is, as St. Paul says, something to 
be kept under. It is all the while crowding to the 
head and front ; it seeks to be master, and when it 
gets the mastery it is that fearful thing which turns 
on the mind and enslaves it, turns on the spirit and 
smothers it, and finally destroys itself, for so at last 
it works round. It is well, therefore, to have for it 
a certain wholesome contempt ; to keep it down and 
within its lowly place ; to know just how much is 
due to it, due to its appetites and passions. A very 
noble thing is the body, but also a very poor and 
weak thing. What is the body when it may fail 
me at any moment ; when a little bruise or punc- 
ture of the skin will enlist all the attention of my 
being? What is the body when its hold on the 
mind is so weak that, on some slightest accident, it 
withdraws its grasp and lapses into corruption ? I 
will think well of the body, but not too well. Hence 



104 THE GOPSEL OF THE BODY. 

this experience of physical weakness and infirmity 
is left in order to help us keep a due balance be- 
tween flesh and spirit. 

There are great advantages in not being allowed 
to feel at home in the body. An animal life antag- 
onizes a moral life. When we are at home in the 
body, we are absent from the Lord. Flesh and 
spirit play into and help each other, but they also 
contend against each other, and the conflict is whole- 
some. It is a great impediment to suffer weakness ; 
it is a hard thing to halt in life's labor and lie 
down on a bed of sickness. But the worth of the 
experience is plain, it is a simple logic : the body is 
not always to hold us, and it is well to be reminded 
of it, to keep destiny in mind. The body is not in 
itself a source of power, and it is well to see it re- 
duced to occasional weakness. It is not the master 
of our being, and it is well at times to see it stripped 
of a power it is always assuming. There is a strong 
tendency to make the body itself the chief end of 
existence. Ignorance is always doing this, and the 
worldly are always saying, What shall we eat, and 
what shall we drink ? The rich are prone to indulge 
in a luxury that ends in a pampering of the body. 
These tendencies are constantly at work ; they form in 
their reaction the basis of asceticism, which is but a 
false way of realizing a great truth. But to-day we 
have other influences tending to unduly exalt the 
body, such as the revival of Greek art, and the teach- 
ing of science in regard to the relation of the body to 
civilization. Art, in nearly all its schools, plays about 
the human figure ; a certain school of literature has 



THE GOSPEL OF THE BODY. 105 

no higher inspiration ; science, with intense but nar- 
row vision, wisely, but not with profound discrimi- 
nation, directs us to the physical basis of society, — 
all forgetful that man does not live by bread alone. 
For hunger may feed him ; blindness may give him 
light ; pain may bring peace ; the weakness of the 
body may be the strength of the spirit. 

However it be with all this fine regard paid to 
the body by art and science and philosophy, a docile 
experience of life teaches us that it is good to bear 
burdens on our spirits, and to be pierced with thorns 
in our bodies. For all this finite order and encase- 
ment is a minister to the life which is eternal. 



THE DEFEAT OF LIFE. 



" Three great divines have from different points of view drawn 
out, without exhausting, the subtle phases of Balaam's greatness 
and of his fall. The self-deception which persuades him in every 
case that the sin which he commits may be brought within the rules 
of conscience and revelation (Bishop Butler) ; the dark shade cast 
over a noble course by always standing on the ladder of advance- 
ment (J. H. Newman) ; the combination of the purest form of re- 
ligious belief with a standard of action immeasurably below it 
(Dr. Arnold)." — Dean Stanley, Jewish Church, vol. i. p. 211. 

" Throughout we find in Balaam's character semblances, not 
realities. He would not transgress a rule, but he would violate a 
principle. He would not say white was black, but he would sully 
it till it looked black.' ' — F. W. Robertson, Sermons, vol. v. p. 42. 

' ' O purblind race of miserable men, 
How many among us at this very hour 
Do forge a life-long trouble for ourselves, 
By taking true for false, or false for true ! " 

Tennyson, Geraint and Enid. 

" There is no game so desperate which wise men 
Will not take freely up for love of power, 
Or love of fame, or merely love of play. 
These men are wise, and then reputed wise, 
And so their great repute of wisdom grows, 
Till for great wisdom a great price is bid, 
And then their wisdom do they part withal : 
Such men must still be tempted with high stakes." 
Henry Taylor, Philip Van Artevelde, i. 3. 



THE DEFEAT OF LIFE. 



Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be 
like his. — Numbers xxiii. 10. 

Balaam the son of Bosor, who loved the wages of unrighteous- 
ness. — 2 Peter ii. 15. 

Longing to die the death of the righteous, and 
yet loving the wages of unrighteousness : such is the 
contradiction in which this great character stands 
out. 

Contradictory qualities pass without much notice 
unless they are moral. It does not surprise us that 
Caesar was both lenient and severe ; these traits 
may have been the gradations of one trait, or each 
may have been the dictate of his practical wisdom. 
But when we find him without belief in the gods and 
at the same time superstitious, we are puzzled and 
astonished. It is because a moral contradiction is 
wider and more violent than an intellectual one. 
There is an imperative demand in all minds that 
morality shall be entire, without flaw or break ; so 
human nature pays its tribute to the reality and 
value of morality. Such contradiction in a great 
character awakens more surprise than when seen in 
an ordinary man. It belongs to greatness that it 



110 THE DEFEAT OF LIFE. 

shall be uniform, of one piece ; it goes along with 
strength, and strength implies oneness and unity. 
Hence great men resist no imputation so emphat- 
ically as that of inconsistency. When the littleness 
or the contradiction shows itself, we say, Why does 
the greatness not turn on it and crush it out ? So 
we might expect, but so it is not. 

The story of Balaam has little interest for us 
until we uncover the man somewhat, and find out 
how great and brilliant a figure he was. It is then, 
when the range of his vision and the fervor of his 
prophetic spirit are fully seen, that his moral deflec- 
tion begins to puzzle and astound us. 

The Israelites, toughened physically and morally 
by their long sojourn in the desert, and now well con- 
solidated into a nation, are beginning to emerge from 
their southern retreat, and to betray their designs 
upon the regions bordering on the Jordan. They 
have met and defeated the desert tribes, and are now 
threatening Moab which lies in their way. Balak, 
king of Moab, undertakes the defense of his terri- 
tory, and, like a wise general, studies and adopts 
the tactics of his successful enemy. He has learned 
that the Israelites are led by Moses, a prophet of 
Jehovah, and that his prayers in the battle against 
Amalek secured the victory. He will see what of 
the same sort he can do on his side. Hundreds 
of miles away, near the head waters of the Euphra- 
tes, there lived another prophet of Jehovah, whose 
reputation filled the whole region. It does not 
concern us whether his gifts were on one side or 
the other of the line called supernatural ; whether 



THE DEFEAT OF LIFE. Ill 

his sagacity was merely extraordinary or was clarified 
by special, divine light. It is enough for us that he 
was great, keen and lofty in his vision, comprehen- 
sive in his judgment ; that he had a high sense of his 
prophetic function, and was at first a man of integ- 
rity. Balak sends for him. The Israelites have a 
prophet ; he will have a prophet. He sees in the 
battles hitherto fought a weight not belonging to the 
battalions, a spiritual force that won the victory ; he 
will employ that force on his side. Moses is a 
prophet of Jehovah; his prophet also shall be 
Jehovah's. A very shrewd man is this Balak. 
Holding to the Oriental custom of devoting an 
enemy to destruction before battle, he will match his 
enemy even in this respect as nearly as possible. 
That a prophet should be found outside the Hebrew 
nation is simply an indication that God has witnesses 
in all nations ; it denies the theory that would con- 
fine all light and inspiration to one chosen people. 
That Balaam comes from the ancient home of 
Abraham hints the possibility of a still lingering 
monotheism in that region. Though so remote, he 
probably knew all about the Israelites : their history 
from the patriarchs down, their exodus from Egypt, 
their religion, their development under the guiding 
hand of Moses, their power in battle, and the resist- 
less energy with which they were slowly moving up 
from the desert with their eyes on the rich slopes of 
Palestine. He doubtless knew that this was not only 
a migration of a detached people, such as was now 
often occurring in Asia, but a migration inspired by 
a religion somewhat in keeping with his own. These 



112 THE DEFEAT OF LIFE. 

Israelites were not his enemies, and he could not 
readily be made to treat them as such. When the 
messengers of Balak come to him with their hands 
full of rewards, asking him to go and curse Israel, 
he weighs the matter well, devotes a whole night to 
it, carries it to God in the simplicity of a good con- 
science, and refuses to go. So far he seems a true 
man, acting from considerations of mingled wisdom 
and inspiration. The messengers retrace their long 
journey, but Balak sends again by more honorable 
men and doubtless with larger gifts. He is a shrewd 
man, and knows what sort of a thing is the human 
heart. He sends not only gifts, but promises of pro- 
motion to great honor, and all by the hands of 
princes, — a triple temptation ; flattery, riches, place. 
How often does any man resist their united voice ? 
Often enough he resists one of them ; flattery can- 
not seduce him, nor money buy him, nor ambition 
deflect him, but when all unite, — flattery dropping 
its sweet words into the ear, gold glittering before 
the eye, and ambition weaving its crown before the 
imagination, — who stands out against these when 
they unite to a definite end ? They had their com- 
mon way with Balaam, but not at once. Such men 
as he do not go headlong and wholly over to the bad 
side in a moment. The undoing of a strong char- 
acter is something like its upbuilding, a process of 
time and degree. 

This time the messengers are detained that he may 
again consult God. He is very sure that he shall 
confine himself to the word of the Lord, but he 
himself, out of his own heart, has begun to enter- 



THE DEFEAT OF LIFE. 113 

tain the purpose of getting upon the scene of these 
glittering temptations. He proposes to remain a 
true man, but he enjoys the company of these hon- 
orable princes. He will remain a true man, but he 
would like to be near a king who can send such 
presents. He will remain a true man, but, once in 
Moab, his wit will stand him in hand better than in 
these dull regions where he dwells. His lofty utter- 
ances, soon to be spoken, showed that he was well 
aware that the fields of activity and greatness were 
westward. It is the old, old story of humanity, — 
dallying with temptation in the field of the imagina- 
tion, bribing conscience with fair promises, yet all the 
while moving up to the forbidden thing. It is a 
history not seldom repeated. Oh, no ! I shall never 
become a miser, but I propose to be exceedingly 
prudent. I shall never throw away my reputation, 
my character, but I will feed eye and ear and im- 
agination with pictures of forbidden pleasure. I 
shall never become a drunkard, but I will drink in 
moderation. I shall never permit myself to be 
called a selfish man, but I will take good care of 
myself in this rough world. I shall never become 
dishonest, but I will keep a keen eye for good 
chances. Thus it is that men are passing to ruin 
over a path paved with double purposes. 

Balaam now gets a different answer. The first 
time he is honest and open, and is told to remain ; 
the next time he takes into the interview his own 
desires which are against his convictions, and a 
half-formed purpose, and he comes out of it with 
the answer he wants : desire has taken the lead of 



114 THE DEFEAT OF LIFE. 

conscience. He starts on his ill-fated journey, meets 
with strange, confounding experiences, — reflections 
of the moral confusion into which he has fallen, — 
experiences, however, that serve to steady and but- 
tress him on his professional side, but are not able 
to prevent his fall as a man. 

On reaching Balak, a remarkable interview takes 
place, the record of which appears in the prophecy 
of Micah ; for this story took a strong and lasting 
hold of the Jewish mind, and pointed for it many 
a moral, as it does still. The king in his eagerness 
asks Balaam how he shall come before the High 
God, — with burnt offerings ? with thousands of 
rams and rivers of oil ? or shall I sacrifice my first- 
born ? Any or all of these will I bring ! Balaam 
replies in those lofty words, — the sum of all duty 
still, — " He hath showed thee, O man, what is 
good ; and what doth the Lord require of thee but 
to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly 
with thy God ? " He thus begins his relations with 
Balak at the highest point of duty of which he can 
conceive. It is not to the king that he speaks, but 
to himself, — a mighty effort to confirm himself in 
his integrity as he enters upon the doubtful busi- 
ness before him. So men who find themselves verg- 
ing towards crimes will often bless themselves with 
a text, and hide themselves momentarily in the 
strongest towers of duty. Balaam and Balak are 
worlds apart in conception, but at bottom they 
are not far asunder. Robed thus in deceptive 
sanctity, Balaam enters upon the work in hand, and 
offers sacrifices thrice in succession upon points that 



THE DEFEAT OF LIFE. 115 

overlook the tents of Israel and their future home. 
His altars, built by heathen hands and kindled by 
strange fire, fill the air with smoke, — a proceeding 
designed to affect the mind of Balak; but when 
Balaam speaks, it is a blessing, and not a curse. 
He will please the king in the matter of sacrifice, 
he will make up by ceremony what he will lose by 
prophecy, but he has not yet reached the point of 
saying what he does not believe. He has trifled 
with his conscience ; he has deceived Balak ; he has 
opened himself to the approaches of avarice and am- 
bition, but he has not sunk to the depth of lying. 
He has always cherished his prophetic gift, holding 
it in a choice and reverent way, and he will not dis- 
honor it for any price. He is sadly wrenched, half 
wrecked in this doubtful undertaking, and he sees 
no good way out of it, but, come what may, he will 
not turn his back upon his whole life and deny the 
principles of his profession ; no, not now will he do 
this, but he will do it in time. He has simply 
halted for a moment in a downward career. In this 
moment all the greatness of his character rushes 
into expression. The very means the king has 
taken to secure a curse provoke a blessing. As 
Balaam stands on the heights overlooking the num- 
berless tents of Israel, — " as gardens by the river's 
side," — the history of the wonderful people and of 
their leader presses upon him and stirs his prophetic 
spirit; their history suggests their destiny; out of 
their past he constructs their future ; their God is 
his God. He knows the force of the inspiration 
hidden in their hearts, and with what divine wisdom 



116 THE DEFEAT OF LIFE. 

they are organized; he sees with what resistless 
energy they have pushed their way so far, and their 
future is plain. The voice of his own insight and 
outlook and the voice of God agree. He cannot 
and will not speak against manifest destiny and 
eternal purpose. 

There is something unspeakably sad in these 
three outbursts of prophetic fervor, as they come 
from the divided mind of this great man caught in 
the toils of evil and hastening to his doom. We 
are perplexed as well as saddened. How could 
such a man say such things ? we ask. Easily 
enough ; it could hardly have been otherwise. 
When a great man goes down morally, the words 
he last utters before the fatal step are often the best 
he ever spoke, — a truth illustrated by Shakespeare 
in Cardinal Wolsey. There is a certain vantage- 
ground for speech offered by evil as well as by 
goodness; standing on the summit of one, we see 
all the glory and beauty of the other, — never before 
so great as when it is receding forever. There is 
also no stimulus to the imagination, and even to the 
moral nature, like a disturbed conscience ; it is an 
irritant to all the faculties, and leads each up to its 
highest expression. It was out of such a state that 
Balaam spoke, — his mind clear as if filled with 
divine light, his heart aching with conscious degra- 
dation and foreboding his doom. That matchless 
cry of devotion, " Let me die the death of the 
righteous, and let my last end be like his," that has 
passed into the prayers of the ages, sprang to his 
lips not because he expected to die such a death, 



THE DEFEAT OF LIFE. 117 

but because there was creeping upon him the fear 
lest he should not so die. Nor did he so die, but 
in battle, fighting by the side of heathen warriors, 
their wages of unrighteousness in his hands, the 
guilt of horrible crimes on his soul, every principle 
he had cherished abandoned, the doomed enemy 
and victim of the nation he had blessed. 

The parallel to his career is found in Macbeth, — 
the slow descent of a noble nature from heights of 
chivalric loyalty to the depths of a traitorous and 
brutal death-fight. The brilliancy of his genius, flash- 
ing out after the integrity of his moral nature has 
been lost, reminds us of Mr. Dimmesdale in the " Scar- 
let Letter," whom the author represents as preaching 
with a fervency and power such as he had never 
before shown, on the very day of the culmination in 
himself of his long-hidden crime. Hawthorne does 
not mean to represent Dimmesdale as a hypocrite ; 
he is aiming to portray the subtler truth that the very 
process by which a great nature is ruined serves to 
call out the highest powers of the man. We are to 
think of Balaam as he stands on Pisgah blessing 
Israel, in no other light than as a great man, caught 
in the toils of evil, taking a farewell of himself, 
throwing up his past, his truth and honor ; but be- 
fore he parts with them and wholly joins hands 
with this Balak, he concentrates in one heroic utter- 
ance all the past glory and fidelity of his life, — a 
true man for one moment more, and then passes on, 
as if driven by fate, to the death he would not die. 

There are several difficulties in the narrative 
which it is not well to pass by in any consideration 
of the man. 



118 THE DEFEAT OF LIFE. 

The first is the violent contradiction between the 
two answers received from God. The first time God 
tells him not to go ; the second time he bids him 
go, but is angry with him because he goes. What 
does this contradiction mean ? There is no meaning 
in it till we drop the external shell of the story, and 
look at the moral working of Balaam's mind, when 
all becomes orderly and natural. There is here no 
contradiction, as later on there is no miracle. Be- 
tween the first and second asking there is a change 
in his moral attitude. In the first he is docile 
and obedient, and the voice of conscience, which 
is the voice of God, prevails and decides his con- 
duct. He enters into the second already half won 
by Balak, dislodged from his old sympathies, rest- 
less under the comparison between his old life and 
that laid open to him. When men revolve moral 
questions in such a temper, they commonly reach 
a decision that accords with their wish rather than 
with their conscience. Balaam has abandoned the 
field of simple duty, — duty so plain that there is 
no need of second thoughts. It is clear enough 
that in no way could it be right to curse those whom 
God had blessed ; this he well knows, and the spon- 
taneous verdict of his conscience is God's first an- 
swer. But, brooding over the matter and sore 
pressed by temptation, he begins to contrive ways in 
which he may win the gifts and honors of Balak, and 
also remain an honest prophet. Here is his mis^ 
take. Duty is no longer a simple, imperative thing, 
but something that may be conjured with, a subor- 
dinate, mutable tool instead of an absolute law. 



THE DEFEAT OF LIFE. 119 

Having thus blinded himself as to the nature of 
duty, there will no longer be any certainty in his 
moral operations ; confusion of thought leads to 
confusion of action ; in his own transformation he 
transforms God ; he now hears God bidding him do 
what he desires to do. Still, at times, conscience 
revives, his judgment returns, and then he knows 
that God is angry with him for doing what he had 
brought himself to think he might rightly do. This 
is every-day experience put into this ancient story 
in a dramatic yet real way. When a man has thus 
trifled with himself and with his duty, God does in- 
deed seem to say to him, " Go on in your chosen 
course." He serves God in the externals of religion, 
but in business cheats and lies in what he calls busi- 
ness ways, and grinds the faces of the poor under 
some theory of competition, yet God prospers him ; 
no hindering word comes to him from Providence or 
from the insulted spirit of truth. It may be better, 
it may be, in a certain sense, the command of God, 
that one who starts on such a path shall follow it to 
the end, and find out by experience what he has re- 
jected as an intuition. With the fro ward God shows 
himself froward. When Israel set up idols, God 
answered them according to idols. A laissez-faire 
theory of social economy brings temporary prosper- 
ity, which is interpreted as the approval of Heaven, 
— the idol answered according to itself. To those 
who have pleasure in unrighteousness God sends a 
strong delusion that they should believe a lie. This 
is the concrete way of stating how the moral nature 
acts when it is led by double motives. It comes into 



120 THE DEFEAT OF LIFE. 

bewilderment ; it gets no true answers when it ap- 
peals to God ; its own sophistries seem to it the voice 
of God. It can no longer tell the voice of God from 
its own voice. " Fair is foul, and foul is fair." 

The next difficulty encountered is the strange 
story of the dumb ass rebuking the madness of the 
prophet ; a strange story indeed until we get at its 
moral equivalents, when it no longer seems strange, 
but simple, every-day truth. With the form of the 
story we have little to do. But few persons will 
consider it worth while to pause long upon it ; or 
they will but study it as an illustration of the way in 
which the ancient Oriental mind embodied subtle 
moral processes for which it had not yet found any 
direct method of expression. The scene lies in the 
infancy of the world, and the speech is as of an in- 
fant, but, as in the speech of infants, there may be 
truth that our dull ears cannot hear. If any con- 
sider it necessary to have some theory of it in order 
to save the letter of Scripture, there is no objection ; 
only let no theory of literalism or zeal for miracle 
rob the story of its moral value. The thing signi- 
fied is very plain, and may be read apart from any 
theory. Balaam is doing what he knows he ought 
not to do ; there is a great wrong in his heart send- 
ing up its protests to the brain. The man is at cross- 
purposes, and vents his unrest and ill-feeling upon 
outward objects. How often it happens ! One in ill- 
humor often curses the tools he is using, — the dull- 
ness of a saw, the waywardness of a shuttle, the 
knife that wounds his hand ; he beats his horse or 
dog ; he scolds his children. Here we come nigh the 



THE DEFEAT OF LIFE. 121 

very heart of the story. When, in some fit of ill- 
temper brought on by our own wrong-doing, we have 
beaten an animal, or spoken roughly to a child, and 
then have noticed the humble patience of the brute 
under our anger, or the meek undesert of the child 
reflected from its upturned eyes, there comes over us 
a sense of shame and an inward confession that the 
wrong is not in the brute or in the child, but in us. 
The beast or the child speaks back to us ; its very 
bearing and looks become audible voices of rebuke. 
When a great man like Balaam gets involved in 
wrong- doing, all nature is changed to him, and 
from all things come rebuking voices. When 
Macbeth returns from the murder of the king, a 
simple knocking at the gate appalls him and deep- 
ens the color of his blood-stained hands ; one sense 
runs into and does the office of another. To a har- 
assed and guilty conscience, the light comes with a 
condemnation ; every true and orderly thing meets it 
with reproof, — angels of God that confront it, but 
do not turn it from its fatal course. Balaam would 
have turned back, but he is told to go on. This is 
only another stage of the moral confusion into which 
he has fallen. He would go back, but the spirit of 
sophistry again begins to work, and he goes forward, 
but he will speak only the true word, — evil drawing 
him on, while he excuses it with the plea of right in- 
tentions, — a daily history on every side ! Why did 
Balaam not go back ? He could not. When a man 
does wrong in a simple and impulsive way under the 
direct force of temptation, he can retrace his steps ; 
but when he has found what seems to him a safe 



122 THE DEFEAT OF LIFE. 

path to a coveted end, he seldom gives over. Many- 
men with scrupulous consciences do not regret being 
yoked with partners who are less particular ; and 
many men do as a corporation what not one of them 
would do as an individual. Balaam could not avail 
himself of these modern methods, and so made a 
partnership and corporation of his own divided na- 
ture, — reaping speedily in himself the bitter con- 
sequences of such action that overtake the modern 
man slowly but no less surely. 

There is also a certain fascination in evil that 
draws men on, — a truth that Dickens has illustrated 
in so many of his pages, even as we find it in every- 
day life, — persistence in evil courses when appar- 
ently nothing is to be gained, a return to them after 
they have been abandoned, a blind daring of the 
penalty bound up with them, contempt for expe- 
rience. There is a sound doctrine named " the per- 
severance of the saints," founded on its human side 
on a passion for goodness when once tasted. There 
is a corresponding truth in the kingdom, of evil — a 
perseverance of evil-doers, resting on the fascination 
of evil ; for evil gets its power largely from a cer- 
tain play of fine qualities that it calls into action. 
It challenges the will to a trial of strength; it re- 
sents the plain ploddings of virtue ; it delights in 
the novelty of strange experiences, in the uncertainty 
that attends its course, and in the pseudo-knowledge 
uncovered by forbidden things. It is the immortal 
mistake ! Its history and doom are written over 
and over again, — in the Edenic traditions, in this 
great character fascinated by a doubtful career pic- 



THE DEFEAT OF LIFE. 123 

tured in his imagination while distant from its 
scene, and drawn into a field of action where " he 
wonld not play false and yet would wrongly win ; " 
written again and again in the lives of many great 
and even good men, who set their minds upon ends 
before they fully consider methods ; found also in 
organized schools and bodies who are governed by 
the maxim that the means justify the end, in gov- 
ernments that strive to save themselves by compro- 
mise with evil, in churches that decline to protest 
against popular sins in order to secure revenues, in 
communities that license evils under the plea of re- 
straining them, in trials for heresy that cloak per- 
sonal hatred under zeal for the truth, in societies 
that wage theological strifes under the plea of ful- 
filling a trust. 

This history will always attract the moralist for 
the fineness with which it outlines the fall of su- 
perior natures. It shows not how the weak and 
ignorant and besotted sin, but how the strong, the 
would-be good, the brilliant, and even the wise are 
betrayed into evil. It shows also that the end and 
doom reached is the same with that of gross and 
vulgar sin. It illustrates the folly of trying to mix 
up good and evil, of striving at the same time to do 
right and wrong, — doing right in one part of the 
life and wrong in another, doing a bad thing and 
excusing it by a good motive or by coupling it with 
a good action. It shows also how one may observe 
all the outward forms of good conduct and cherish 
its purpose, and yet stand on the brink of perdition. 
Balaam will not lie for all the gold the king could 



124 THE DEFEAT OF LIFE. 

give him ; he will do nothing without getting what 
seems to him the divine sanction ; he is full of re- 
ligious fervor and expression, but in and behind it 
all is a self-seeking spirit that feeds upon and dom- 
inates over his virtues. He illustrates that worst 
of all sins, the perversion of sacred gifts, — the 
only sin for which our Lord showed no pity and 
upon which he pronounced the condemnation of 
hell. He illustrates the history of such sin. When 
his veracity and prophetic fervor no longer serve 
him, he drops to base and horrible methods ; his 
virtues, falsely held and used, become the snares 
that lure him to his fate and deepen his doom. 

The thing that is all the while surprising us is 
the collapse of fair characters : the good man, the 
trusted man, the honorable man, in an hour stands 
out a perjurer, a thief, a liar ; but in every case it 
will be found first that he had no tap-root of char- 
acter, and then that he was moved by a double pur- 
pose. On such a foundation no man can long stand. 
Some wind of chance or blow of circumstance assails 
him, some thread of suspicion trails behind him, 
some crisis closes in upon him, and he passes to the 
ever-sitting judgment that uncovers and separates 
him into his two selves. Character and conduct 
must rest on one and the same foundation, and they 
must be of one piece. 

The whole emphasis of Scripture is thrown upon 
singleness of heart and against double-mindedness. 
There can be no service of God and mammon ; no 
man can serve the Master and go first to bury the 
dead ; first and always must one seek the kingdom 



THE DEFEAT OF LIFE. 125 

of God ; whatsoever is not of faith is sin ; do all for 
the glory of God ; only the pure in heart see God ; 
the gates of the heavenly Jerusalem are each one 
pearl, — one entrance only into eternal life. 

Christian teaching has not yet enough emphasized 
the grace of simplicity or single-mindedness. It is 
left secondary, or dropped into a lower category, as 
not quite spiritual, or as not being an element of 
saving faith. We have failed to see that it is the 
expression of the unity of God, and that it is both 
the substance and essence of the Christ character ; 
that in nothing else is Christ so one with God as in 
the absolute simplicity in which he was grounded, his 
whole being moving in the one straight line of truth, 
his eye ever single and never wandering to take in 
an opposite motive, bearing witness to the truth, 
and for that end alone is he in the world, making no 
bargains with conscience, saying and doing the one 
thing that is right and true. " Yea and nay," not 
something between or of both, — that is his rule of 
conversation. Doing what he sees the Father do, — 
that is his rule of conduct. Looking with a single 
eye for the path of daily duty, — that is his guide. 
Bearing witness to the simple truth, stating things 
as they are and acting as he speaks, though it takes 
him to the cross, — that is his history. He is no 
casuist weighing motives. He knows no doctrine of 
expediency that involves morals. He would not 
have mingled one drop of falsehood with an ocean 
of truth to have saved the world ; he could not thus 
have saved it. The church has not yet measured 
Christ in this attitude. It has heeded the truth he 



126 THE DEFEAT OF LIFE. 

spoke but not the Truth he was, forgetting that the 
truth spoken has value and power only because he 
is himself its embodiment. Were he fully recog- 
nized in this supreme attitude, what an upturning 
would it cause in many a life, many a pulpit and 
church and synod ! For the primal lie — good for 
eye and taste and making wise as gods — is still the 
deceiver of mankind. An alloy of evil to make 
good current, — that is the fallacy which underlies 
a great deal that calls itself right in this world. 

A spirit of simplicity, truthfulness, life all on one 
side and of one piece, life without any sort of lies, 
— there is nothing a man should so strive after as 
this, for he is striving after vital air — for the life of 
the soul itself. 



THE TWO PRAYERS OF JOB. 



" He that lacks time to mourn, lacks time to mend. 
Eternity mourns tkat. 'T is an ill cure 
For life's worst ills to have no time to feel them. 
Where sorrow 's held intrusive and turned out, 
There wisdom will not enter, nor true power, 
Nor aught that dignifies humanity. ' ' 

Henry Taylor, Philip Van Artevelde, i. 5. 

" Present unhappiness is selfish ; past sorrow is compassionate. 

' ' The man knows only how to say ' sorrow ; ' the Christian, better 
informed, says ' trial. ' Trial ! that word explains man, evil, Chris- 
tianity, expiation, heaven, God. 

' ' The heart which has wept much resembles the rock of Horeb, 
which is now dry, but preserves the mark of the waters which 
gushed from it in days of yore. 

" At the bottom of every man there is an abyss which hope, joy, 
ambition, hate, love, the sweetness of thinking, the pleasure of 
writing, the pride of conquest, cannot fill. The whole world cast 
into that abyss would not satisfy it ; but, my God ! a drop, one 
single drop, of your grace causes it to overflow." — Joseph Roux, 
Meditations of a Parish Priest. 



THE TWO PRAYERS OF JOB. 



And it was so, when the days of their feasting were gone about, 
that Job sent and sanctified them, and rose up early in the morning, 
and offered burnt offerings according to the number of them all ; 
for Job said : It may be that my sons have sinned, and renounced 
God in their hearts. Thus did Job continually. — Job i. 5. 

And the Lord turned the captivity of Job when he prayed for his 
friends. — Job xlii. 10, Rev. Ver. 

These two quotations describe two prayers of 
Job ; the first offered in the days of his prosperity, 
before his great lesson in suffering had been entered 
upon, and the last after it was ended. 

Prayer not only distinguishes the good man from 
the bad, but it also marks the grades of character 
in a good man. Job was always unimpeachable in 
his integrity, irreproachable in his conduct, merci- 
ful in his spirit ; but he was a very different man 
at the last from what he was at the first. His trial 
was not a test of the firmness of character already 
won ; nor was it sent merely to confirm him in his 
character, but to develop a higher quality of charac- 
ter. The kind of man he was, and the kind of man 
he became, are indicated in these two prayers. 

Notice first his prayer for his sons. The picture 
of Job at the outset is that of unbounded prosperity 



130 THE TWO PRAYERS OF JOB. 

combined with the highest integrity and complete do- 
mestic happiness. He was a prince, — none greater 
in all the East ; he was rich in all that made riches 
in those days, — sheep and camels and oxen and she- 
asses ; he had a great retinue, and, to crown all, a 
family perfect after the Eastern ideal, — seven sons 
and three daughters, — sons enough to strengthen 
his own house, and daughters enough to form alli- 
ances with other princes. So rich, so happy, are 
they all, that they give their days to continual feast- 
ing, filling the week with their alternate visits, in- 
cluding also their sisters, — a practice contrary to 
Oriental custom. And so these happy children of 
a good father spend their time, — rejoicing in one 
another, and in the prosperity of a father who 
can so endow their houses. The picture, you per- 
ceive, is not painted to the life, but to the ideal of 
life. We are not here reading actual events ; we are 
looking upon the background of a picture of a great 
moral experience. But the picture is not finished 
until we behold him covering this life of his children 
with the protecting mantle of his prayers. He 
knows already what he will some day know better, 
— that prosperity has its dangers. His sons are 
good, and their feasting is innocent ; but he feared 
lest they should forget God in it, and fall away 
from religious conceptions of life. What he thus 
feared as the result of prosperity was the same thing 
that afterward came to him in his misery. Pros- 
perity may tempt us to forget God, and wretched- 
ness may lead us to curse him. And so Job # 
every week offered burnt offerings, presenting thus 



THE TWO PRAYERS OF JOB. 131 

his children to Heaven sanctified and cleansed from 
any possible fault or casual sin. Notice again this 
ideal picture, and see how perfect and beautiful it 
is: riches without stint, domestic love, joyousness 
without break, — all flowing out of a father's 
bounty, and redeemed from all possible evil by a 
father's prayers, — earthly happiness, tender affec- 
tion, and careful piety combined into a perfect whole. 

And this is what we all admire, what we all would 
have and do. What other way of life is there for a 
sensible man to follow but to strive for prosperity, 
to surround himself with love, and to redeem it 
from evil with piety, — the necessary and rational 
aim and course of life in this world ? Only let no 
man think that is all or enough ; and, lest we shall be 
tempted to think it all or enough, God often sweeps 
away our prosperity, and carries us off into other 
regions of life and blessedness. 

Yet, as this picture lingers in our vision, who can 
but delight in and approve it ? Its beauty, its agree- 
ment with the tenderest and sweetest sides of human 
nature, its fulfillment of all that the heart craves, its 
grace of piety so charm us that we say: Would 
that my life were such ! 

So it is until life is opened up to us in its deeper 
meanings and objects, until the heavens also are 
opened and the powers of an endless life descend 
upon us. Then we see the defects of this picture, 
and of the life it depicts. For, after all, what is Job 
thinking of and doing, and aiming at ? Merely the 
enjoyment and wise use of his prosperity. He has 
got him all these flocks and herds, these sons and 



132 THE TWO PRAYERS OF JOB. 

daughters, and he puts them into relations of enjoy- 
ment, — sweet and real indeed, — while he stands 
by and prays Heaven that it may not be marred nor 
interrupted. His whole life is within the circle of 
his own prosperity ; his piety does not reach beyond 
the field of this prosperity ; his prayers rise for his 
children as they go their happy ways. He is perfect 
and upright, just and merciful, but all this is an 
element, and perhaps a cause, of his prosperity. The 
whole argument of the book turns on the fact that 
Job was free from fault, and did not deserve the evil 
that came upon him. I confess that it is not easy 
to put the finger on the flaw, or lack, or need in him 
that justifies his trial. It can only be explained 
by referring it to the mysterious way in which God 
sees fit to deal with men. Only this we can say : 
that God cannot fulfill his purpose with man in the 
field of prosperity, where there is always occasion 
for the question : Do we serve God for naught ? 
That is, there is a temptation to serve God, not for 
himself, but for the sake of the prosperity. While 
the ostensible object of the book is to refute the 
idea that all suffering is deserved, its real object 
is to show that piety, in its high sense, is not per- 
fected in the field of prosperity. And it never 
is ; Providence cooperates with grace, and what we 
call prosperity in the ordinary sense — full, last- 
ing, universal — is not the portion of human life. 
The flocks and the herds may remain, but some- 
thing dearer than these is taken away; or riches 
and family may be spared, but darts of secret 
trouble find their way into our hearts ; or, if these 



THE TWO PRAYERS OF JOB. 133 

troubles stand aloof, over us hangs our mortality, 
whose touch ever threatens to burst the bubble of 
prosperous life. It is not a morbid fancy, but a 
simple fact, that prosperity cannot ripen character. 
In that sphere it cannot be made evident to others or 
to ourselves that we are not serving God for a reward. 
Hence the trier of life — the messenger of God — 
goes walking up and down the earth, jostling men 
out of their prosperity, and driving them into worlds 
of poverty and loss and sorrow and disease and 
loneliness, where they can test their principles and 
find out what they believe, what they stand on, and 
what they are living for. This is not Job's history 
alone : it is yours and mine and every man's. 

We turri now to his second prayer, offered when 
his great lesson in life had been gone through. The 
Sabeans have swept away his oxen and asses ; light- 
ning has consumed his sheep ; the Chaldeans have 
stolen his camels ; his servants have been slain ; a 
whirlwind has killed his children at their feasting. 
All this he endures in the highest spirit of submis- 
sion : " The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken 
away ; blessed be the name of the Lord." But sub- 
mission is not a high grace. Job enforces it by a 
bit of rather stern but fair logic : " Naked was I 
born, and naked shall I go hence." Who can com- 
plain of that? It is nature circling round to its 
beginning : as well complain of being born naked 
as of dying naked. Submission at its highest point 
touches only the lowest in true character, the field of 
which does not lie in the will of God, but in the 
love of God. Submission to the Divine will has no 



134 THE TWO PRAYERS OF JOB. 

value except as it leads into the Divine sympathy. 
Job's losses did not take him there. Like a God- 
fearing man, and with a great deal of a man's 
strength, he stands up against all this heavy buf- 
feting, firm in himself and his principles. And so 
the trial is brought closer, even to his body, and 
into the deepest recesses of his own heart and mind. 
For, say what we will about it, the lessons of Provi- 
dence do not wholly reach and cover us, they do not 
get down to the inmost centre of self, until we our- 
selves, in our personality, are involved in them. 
God cannot say to us through another what he can 
say to us in ourselves. We may love another more 
than self, and that other one may be taken away 
from us through sufferings that we would gladly 
have borne, and the lesson may be of priceless 
value ; still, when God would speak his uttermost 
truth to us, when he would communicate to us his 
highest secret, — namely, his love for others, — he 
must speak it directly into our own ear, and through 
our own personal experience. Only as these springs 
of personal life are touched and pressed will they 
respond to the Divine word. Job had lost all that 
he had ; but still between his losses and God there 
was himself, strong in will, sound in body, hedged 
about by the consciousness of his integrity. God 
had come very near to him, but not into him ; he 
must get inside of this image of himself, behind his 
will and down into that self-love which is the ultimate 
field of the Divine action ; he must take possession 
of this royal citadel of the body, and send his mes- 
sengers of humbling pain along the nerves, and turn 



THE TWO PRAYERS OF JOB. 135 

the veins into channels of loathsomeness, and make 
him a contempt unto himself, — his will and strength 
and pride and self-complacence swept away from him 
even as his flocks and children had been : then Job 
could say : — 

" I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear ; 
But now mine eye seeth thee." 

It is under such conditions that he is able to think 
out his great question, and repel the sophistries that 
thought is always forcing upon us when it draws 
upon speculation instead of interrogating life itself. 
Job's friends discoursed upon life as they thought 
it was ; he, as he knew it and felt it. There is no 
philosophy of life but the experience of it ; there is 
no knowledge of God until, in some way, we come 
completely into his hands. Sin and need and sor- 
row may drive us there, but only life itself, in all its 
length and depth and vicissitude and final emptiness, 
can fully place us there. 

There is more in the book of Job than is found in 
the line of its argument, which is a vindication of 
Providence in the matter of suffering. There is also 
to be found in it the effect of suffering. Hence, 
when Job emerges from his trial, we find him a dif- 
ferent man, and standing in a different environment ; 
he himself has been enlarged, and so he is set in a 
larger field. He is no longer within the narrow, 
happy circle of his family ; his brethren and sisters, 
and all that had been of his acquaintance, come 
about him, and bemoan his troubles and comfort 
him. O, how true is the heart of man to man when 
he is true to God ! They give him gifts of money 



136 THE TWO PRAYERS OF JOB. 

to rebuild his estate, and rings of gold for the 
renewal of his princely condition. He comes again 
into prosperity, but not as the same man. Now he 
knows what prosperity is, and what it is for. By 
having it and by losing it, down even to the loss of 
himself, he has found God, and, having found God, 
he may safely regain prosperity. The book has 
been thought to drop below the highest ethics, and 
to play into the Jewish conception of prosperity as 
the earthly reward of piety, because it leaves Job 
where it found him. But its thought runs deeper. 
Its ethics are of the universal sort ; there is in them 
little of place and time, this world or any other ; 
they are eternal in their nature. Prosperity is not, 
indeed, the reward of piety, but it is eternally true 
that the meek inherit the earth ; that all things are 
ours ; that we are joint heirs with Christ in the 
universe of God. In Job, this great truth is dra- 
matically set forth under the conditions assumed in 
the story. 

But the point where we most clearly see the change 
in Job is in his prayer for his friends. Then his 
captivity of suffering and trial is turned. At the 
outset, he prays for his family, — a narrow circle ; 
but when he has passed through his mighty lesson, 
he prays again, — for his friends, so called, but no 
friends. They had come to him as such, but they 
proved themselves miserable comforters. Their 
words had only increased the perplexities of his 
struggling heart ; their unjust reproaches had but 
stung him with keener pain, and driven him into a 
farther isolation from his fellows. Instead of enter- 



THE TWO PRAYERS OF JOB. 137 

ing into his sufferings with true sympathy, they 
made them the text for their sophistries, and a foil 
for the play of their shallow theories. His condi- 
tion is to them not an occasion for help and pity, but 
for speculation. They are much more concerned for 
God's character than for the sufferings of God's 
child ; more fearful that the foundations of their 
theology may be disturbed than that Job may perish 
under the heavy hand of God, — an old picture, but 
steadily reproduced in the church as, age after age, 
it wrangles over its theodicies while humanity groans 
and perishes unhelped. Their conduct produced its 
legitimate effect upon Job : You are very pious, and 
very careful of God's government, but you seem to 
think little of me ; you know all about God's ways 
and plans, but you know nothing of what I think 
and suffer, and so I consider that you know nothing 
about God ; your system is very correct, beautifully 
proportioned; one part follows from and upholds 
another ; the logic is exact and faultless, but I have 
found out in my experience that it is not true ; it 
does not cover my case ; I am willing to suffer under 
the unexplained providence of God, but I protest 
against being made a text for your dogmatic opin- 
ions ; you seem to be right, but the whole creation 
of God is against you. 

Job's feeling is the reflection of God's, whose 
wrath was kindled against these men ; but it was a 
transient feeling, and passed away as he emerged 
from his trial. When he had come to see God 
with his eye, and had humbled himself in dust and 
ashes, there was no place left in him for wrath and 



138 THE TWO PRAYERS OF JOB. 

reproach. God be thanked that a time comes to all 
when hatred dies out ! Job had lost everything, — 
even himself ; but he had found his human heart, 
and it began to beat in charity and love for others, 
and even for his miserable comforters. Then, and 
in that, and because of that, his captivity was turned. 
When he is moved to pray for these friends, he has 
learnt the lesson God had set him. He finds, in the 
consciousness of such love and devout solicitude, the 
solution of the great question that had been vainly 
discussed with words and human knowledge. A new 
feeling towards men, begotten by bitter experience, 
has revealed God to him, and removed all perplexity 
arising from the course of Providence. And so it 
is that, when life and its suffering take us into fel- 
lowship with Christ and his love, all questions are 
settled for us, — settled, that is, by a practical en- 
forcement of the Divine love, but unsettled so long 
as we make them a matter of speculation and 
theory. 

It is not difficult to imagine what the prayer of 
Job was like. He has found truth, and it is so sweet 
and nourishing that he prays these men may also 
find it. He has gained a vision of God, and it is 
so clear and satisfying that he prays it may be 
revealed to those who are sure they know all about 
it. Was the prayer answered? Doubtless, but only 
as they were led through some such experience as 
his own ; for life, with its labor and burden and loss 
and suffering, is the only medium through which the 
knowledge of God can come to us. Hence the In- 
carnation ; hence the Son made perfect through suf- 



THE TWO PRAYERS OF JOB. 139 

f ering ; hence fellowship with Christ as the only way 
of oneness with the Father. 

At the risk of some possible repetition, I will now 
speak, in a more general way, of the effect of suffer- 
ing as it is woven into human life, — not exceptional 
or great suffering, but that inevitable measure of it 
which is wrapt up in ordinary experience. 

It works toward enlarged sympathies. 

Nothing really opens the mind and heart of man 
but suffering. The law, or its analogy, is wrought 
into all nature, and at last God is presented to us 
suffering in his Son. A man cannot think his way 
into large sympathy with his fellow-men. No study, 
no effort of will, no practice of benevolence, can 
bring us into a true humanity. While we are pros- 
perous and happy, we think chiefly of ourselves. Im- 
agination, even, cannot overleap the walls of happy 
circumstances. We must suffer in ourselves before 
we can truly love others ; and we must suffer greatly 
before we can love widely. Suffering alone will 
sting and spur this sacred feeling into genuine ac- 
tivity. Why it is so, we may not be able to tell, 
unless it be that only thus do we gain a thorough 
knowledge of ourselves. A heavy sickness will teach 
one more psychology than all the books can. Get- 
ting thus some true and full sense of self, and find- 
ing out what a precious thing the soul is, and how it 
can feel and suffer and rejoice, we reach a path that 
leads divinely to others. There in is the heart of 
man a secret chamber where God has put all human- 
ity, and himself also : touch its door with the hand 
of suffering and it flies open, and man finds himself 



140 THE TWO PRAYERS OF JOB. 

one with all others, and God himself in the midst of 
them. This is the truth of the Incarnation ; hence 
the Lamb of God eternally slain ; hence he who 
loved the whole world could only love it by suffering 
in and with and for it. 

Suffering is a mystery and it is not a mystery, — 
a mystery in the sinless brute world, in the babe that 
wails out its little life in agony, in faultless men and 
women who serve God all their days and suffer in 
them all. It is a mystery as it travels by sure 
cause along the generations from some ancestral 
source ; it is a mystery when we see it dissociated 
from fault or desert, or issuing from ignorance or 
from the forces of nature. A mystery, but perhaps 
the key to all truth ; for, if it unlocks the heart of 
God so that he becomes Love, and if it melts the 
hearts of men so that they flow together in sympathy 
and welds them into one mighty, mutual force of re- 
deeming effort, then it is no longer a mystery, but 
the very light of truth and the solvent of all things. 
Under such a conception, its presence in the inno- 
cent brute world, in little children, in the good and 
faithful, only seems to show that it cannot be kept 
out of any part of the creation, because it is the key 
to the whole creation. 

Suffering, especially when it is great, and is un- 
deserved by sin, tends to create a clearer and deeper 
sense of God. 

When it is not great, it is simply endured, — 
matched by human will and patience ; but when it is 
long, severe, and heavy, it rouses the mind to thought, 
and, by opening up self, opens also a way to God. 



THE TWO PRAYERS OF JOB. 141 

When it is deserved, when it follows fault and sin, 
it simply reveals a law of nature, and God as a law- 
maker, — things well to be known, but not the best 
and highest. But when it is undeserved, — as in 
the case of Job, — the very mystery and strangeness 
of it send us off to God by a necessity of our nature. 
For, when we cannot explain a thing, and if it is 
something real, something that touches us closely, 
something that forces us to cry, Why ? we are 
driven, because we cannot find out the why, to carry 
it up to God and there leave it. There is but one 
place where the insolvable questions of life can be 
left, — at the feet of God ; a rational thing to do, 
for he who is over and in all things must have in 
himself the explanation of all things. This is the 
argument in the book of Job. God turns his mind 
to the natural world, — to the stars, to the rain and 
dew and lightning, to the brutes, — and confounds 
him by the mystery in these things that are under 
his eye and hand. Their explanation is only to be 
found in God : " Hath the rain a father ? Or who 
hath begotten the drops of dew ? " Take, then, 
this other and nearer mystery of suffering to God, 
and there leave it. Thus Job is led up to the 
great act and state of trust. He did not know and 
could not find out why he suffered ; he had done 
nothing to deserve it ; there was no chain of cause 
and effect in it ; the elements and foreign enemies 
had smitten him, — not his own sins. And so he is 
sent on a blind search after the reason. The ten- 
dency was twofold : to atheize him, to lead him to 
curse God and die, and so end his groaning misery , 



142 THE TWO PRAYERS OF JOB. 

or to follow the better clue till he could sec God as 
with his eye, and at last could say : " Though he slay 
me, yet will I wait for him. I know that my re- 
deemer, my vindicator, liveth. Here upon this dust- 
heap where I sit, exiled from the city, while my very 
skin and flesh fall away from me, I shall see God for 
myself, — not through your eyes, but mine own." 
When a man can reach a confidence like this, and in 
such a way ; when he has thus learned to put the 
perplexity and hardness and bitterness of life on 
one side, and God on the other as the sure solvent 
and cure, he has come very near to God. He no 
longer cries, " Oh that I knew where I might find 
him ! '" Instead, he says, " Now mine eye seeth 
thee." Thus he becomes humble and docile, ready 
to hear the vindication that is pressed in upon him 
by the very nearness of God. 

To trust is the longest step God-ward that any of 
us can take. We cannot by searching find out God ; 
we can only put ourselves where God can come to us. 
He who trusts, who believes, knows God. Faith is 
the path between heaven and earth quite as much as 
between earth and heaven ; as necessary to God for 
reaching us as to us for finding him. The divine 
currents run hitherward first, — along the path of 
God-containing whirlwinds it may be, — and the faith 
that can respond under such disclosure of him is 
that which finds him. 

Suffering also tends to bring us into new rela- 
tions to men. It does this because it has brought 
us into full relations to God. Suffering man and 
God and humanity are united by one golden chain. 



THE TWO PRAYERS OF JOB. 143 

When Job has found God, and so begun to think 
and feel in God-like ways, he begins to think of and 
feel towards men as God does. His captivity is 
turned when his heart turns in pity and yearning 
desire to these associates who had not been taught 
and illuminated in his school. God stops short of 
nothing else with us. We may be humbled till our 
pride is gone, bruised till the will is meek, chastened 
till we are obedient ; we may be disciplined into rev- 
erence and sober thought and virtuous conduct : but 
God is not content with these, nor with anything but 
a love for man like his own. Then our captivity of 
worldly life, of crushing trouble, of dissolving hap- 
piness, of bitter perplexity, of unsubdued spirit, of 
rebellious complaint, is turned. God, indeed, we 
need for trust, but equally we need humanity for 
love and service. There must be a real field for the 
play of our redeemed powers, as there must be for 
the discipline of our unsanctified nature. This field 
is not God, nor heaven, nor our own souls, but this 
world of men about us. 

It is not in vain, my friends, that you are called 
to pass through great trials and sufferings. They 
never leave you what they found you ; God forbid 
they should ! But how you bear them, what they 
make of you, what they lead you to do and to feel, 
will vary according to your own attitude to them. 
Their trend and purpose are towards those two poles 
of duty, God and humanity ; but it is our weakness 
and fault that often we do not read aright their 
meaning. Suffering may leave us hard, selfish, and 
complaining, or it may lead us into the mysteries of 



144 THE TWO PRAYERS OF JOB. 

eternal Providence and into the very fellowship of 
God. There is one thing we cannot do with it : we 
cannot wholly explain it ; we cannot find out on what 
principle it is allotted. A part of it is in the line of 
cause and effect, — sin yielding misery ; a part is 
disciplinary, — the necessary school for ignorance ; 
but there is more that has no such explanations. 
The good suffer almost more than the evil, and there 
is such a thing as happy ignorance, — the very sim- 
plicity of its conditions warding off evil consequences. 
A vast amount of suffering is due to natural causes, 
— lightning and whirlwind and torrent, — that affect 
good and bad alike. A foul miasma poisons a saint 
as soon as a sinner, and an earthquake shakes alike 
the foundations of churches and brothels. But this 
much we can say of suffering, — that it unlocks the 
mysteries of spiritual life, and sets the moral forces 
of our nature in action. It teaches us the oneness 
of humanity, the power of sympathy, the sweetness 
of love. It is not well to ask why we suffer ; we may 
get no answer. Certainly we will get no full answer 
until we experience its effects. Using it thus, we 
find ourselves launched into universal sympathies 
and filled with yearning thoughts for our fellows. 
The children in the street become dear to us as our 
own. The poor cry to us, and not in vain. The 
Samaritan becomes our neighbor, and our neighbor 
as ourself. Then we can pray for our enemies and 
bless those that curse us. Thus the mystery of it 
dies out ; its perplexity vanishes in the great light 
that comes dawning upon us ; we find ourselves 
transported away from the field of its external cause 



THE TWO PRAYERS OF JOB. 145 

and process into that spiritual world where we be- 
hold God himself suffering in his Son, and so re- 
deeming the world out of all its evil, and preparing 
the day when there shall be no more pain, and all 
tears shall be wiped away. 



TEUST AND RIGHTEOUSNESS. 



" Ask and receive, — 't is sweetly said ; 
Yet what to plead for know I not ; 
For wish is worsted, hope o'ersped, 

And aye to thanks returns my thought. 
If I would pray, 
I 've nought to say 
But this, that God may he God still. 
For him to live 
Is still to give, 
And sweeter than my wish his will. 

" ' All mine is thine,' the sky-soul saith ; 
' The wealth I am must thou become ; 
Richer and richer, breath by breath, — 
Immortal gain, immortal room ! ' 
And since all his 
Mine also is, 
Life's gift outruns my fancies far, 
And drowns the dream 
In larger stream, 
As morning drinks the morning star." 

David A. Wasson, All 's Well 

' ' Why shouldst thou fill to-day with sorrow 
About to-morrow, 
My heart ? 
One watches all with care most true, 
Doubt not that he will give thee too 
Thy part." 

Paul Flemming. 

"Enjoy the blessings of this day, if God sends them, and the 
evils of it bear patiently and sweetly : for this day is only ours ; we 
are dead to yesterday, and we are not yet born to the morrow. 
But if we look abroad, and bring into one day's thoughts the evil 
of many, certain and uncertain, what will be and what will never 
be, our load will be as intolerable as it is unreasonable." 

Jeremy Taylor. 



TKUST AND KIGHTEOUSNESS. 



Take therefore no thought for the morrow. — St. Matt, vi. 34. 

The force of the word "therefore" in this phrase 
reaches back over a considerable portion of Christ's 
discourse. Why we need feel no anxiety for the 
future, and how to surmount it, is his theme. In 
an extended illustration, he turns our thoughts to 
certain facts that show the needlessness and the fu- 
tility of this anxiety. The fowls are not anxious, 
yet they are fed; and you are better than they, 
better worth the care of the Heavenly Father. The 
lilies are more gorgeous in their glory than Solomon, 
but a man is more beautiful in the eyes of God than 
a lily, and will more surely be cared for. Besides, 
what is the use of anxiety? It betters nothing, it 
alters nothing. Your life is not going on under 
conditions that may be varied or improved by anx- 
ious forethought ; it is rather going on under condi- 
tions like those of your body. You cannot, by such 
thought, add a single cubit to your stature, nor can 
you add anything of real value to your life by 
anxiety. Drop it, says Christ ; seek first the king- 
dom of God and his righteousness, and you will get 
all you strive after with such fret and care ; this 



150 TRUST AND RIGHTEOUSNESS. 

is the true method. He closes his argument with 
a bit of massive wisdom that well-nigh covers the 
whole philosophy of life : let to-morrow take care 
of itself ; there may be evil in it, but let it alone till 
to-morrow comes. The point of his advice is, that 
the evil which is incidental to life is to be left dis- 
tributed over life, and not be drawn forward, and 
added to the evil of to-day. If you do this, you 
overburden yourself ; each day's evil is enough for 
it ; you manage to get along with it in some way ; 
you overcome it or bear it ; it does not make you 
miserable nor disturb the true course of your life ; 
but if you add to-morrow's evil to that of to-day, 
you will have a heavier burden than you can well 
bear, and will be thrown off the true line of exist- 
ence. Christ does not deny nor lessen the reality 
of evil, — sorrow, perplexity, pain, toil, disappoint- 
ment, — but he requires us to take it as it comes, 
and by no means to anticipate it. For we cannot 
prevent it, it will surely come ; and if we anticipate 
it, we have it twice over. 

Such is the line of thought here, and a most 
soothing picture of life it presents. It takes us out 
of this world of strife and anxiety and foreboding, 
and sets us down in the calm, unstriving world of 
nature with the birds and the flowers, and with as 
little need of anxiety ; for are we not, along with 
them, under the tender care of the Father? A 
soothing picture, indeed, if we could but see and 
realize it ! But as we attempt to do so, we are con- 
fronted by questions that are not easily answered, 
and we are led up to a conception of life seemingly 



TRUST AND RIGHTEOUSNESS. 151 

at variance with its best qualities. Am I to live 
here like a bird of the air, that neither sows nor 
reaps nor garners ? Is it not rather my business to 
sow and reap and gather in ? Am I not put under 
the law of intelligent, careful, thought-taking labor, 
and by no means under the improvident law of the 
brutes? Is not man and his method of living in 
the world the contrast to the birds and their in- 
stincts ? And is a man like a lily, " whose red and 
white nature's own sweet and cunning hand lays 
on"? If a man would be arrayed like Solomon, 
must he not toil and spin ? These are fair ques- 
tions, but they admit of answer. 

Christ does, indeed, intend to put us, in a general 
way, into the category of nature, but it is in a nature 
framed and sustained by an all-wise Father. We 
are in nature, but we are also above nature. So far 
as we are in it, the same care that is over birds and 
flowers is over us. Our bodies grow to their full- 
ness of stature and divine proportions ; the earth 
feeds them ; the light and the rain bless them. The 
fixed laws of nature minister to our physical life 
with tender and constant care. But we are also 
above nature. Nature is fixed ; man is free. The 
animals live by instinct, man lives by thought and 
choice and care ; they are under natural laws, he is 
under moral laws. 

Now, Christ's thought, as I imagine it, is this : as 
the birds and the flowers, in a sort of necessary way, 
keep the laws of their nature under the kindly care 
of the Father, all their wants are met ; they sing 
and feed, they bloom and live out their brief lives 



152 TRUST AND RIGHTEOUSNESS. 

in glad perfection. But the secret of it lies in their 
unconscious obedience to the laws of their being ; it 
is in obedience that the watchful care of God is 
realized. Hence, when Christ comes to apply the 
matter to men, he introduces the condition : Seek 
first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and 
food and drink and raiment will follow. He by no 
means says, Live as careless of the future as a bird, 
but rather, Be as true to your law of righteousness 
as a bird is to the law of its condition, and you 
may be as free from anxiety. The point of the com- 
parison lies in the certainty that the fowls of the 
air will find their wants met in the sure order of 
nature, because God is over and in it. But Christ 
says there is the same certainty in the free, moral 
world. God is over and in that also, and if a man 
will live in that world as faithfully as do the birds 
in theirs, he will as surely be fed, and need feel as 
little anxiety. 

But we meet with other difficulties. There seems 
to be in these words an easy-going strain at variance 
with those qualities of forethought and aim and 
achievement on which the worth and strength of 
life turn. Who becomes wise, or strong, or even 
good without earnest, nay, anxious and care-takiug 
strife? There is no gain or achievement in life 
except as a man looks forward, scans the future 
with stern inquiry and forecast, troubles himself 
with close scrutiny, scourges himself with stout re- 
solve, braces himself to meet the possible storm, 
and gathers the whole future, with all its uncertainty 
and mischance, into his vision. Christ here seems 



TRUST AND RIGHTEOUSNESS. 153 

to conflict with his own teachings. Many of his 
parables turn on forethought of the most strict and 
resolute character. The foolish virgins were shut out 
simply because they were careless of the future. 
The unjust steward wins praise because of his fore- 
thought. Christ here seems to shut us up to the 
present, — Think only of to-day ; but elsewhere and 
for the most part he stands with uplifted, warning 
finger pointing to the future, and says, Strive, ago- 
nize to enter in. There is no doubt that life, as 
Christ taught it, is a process moving on towards a 
realization in the future ; it is an achievement not 
won to-day, but only in the end. We are servants 
awaiting in this night of existence our Lord's re- 
turn. The account of human life is not rendered 
day by day, but when he cometh to reckon. Nei- 
ther the coldest scrutiny nor the most easy-going 
estimate of life will say that it gets its reward as it 
goes on ; it works toward an end and a consumma- 
tion ; its joy is set before it. The wise, Christ- 
taught man is he who keeps the end before him, and 
has the strength and patience to wait, and struggle, 
and press towards it. Why then have we these 
words that seem to soothe us out of this earnest, 
forward-looking, strenuous attitude, and to send 
us off to the simple, carefree world of birds and 
flowers, where indeed a good part of worthless hu- 
manity are content to dwell, — the paradise of fools ? 
Is it not the very thing that Christ did not teach ? 
But the seeming violence of the contradiction is the 
pledge of harmony. Christ does not here hold us 
back from forethought and care and even a sort of 
anxiety. 



154 TRUST AND RIGHTEOUSNESS. 

In the phrase, " Seek first the kingdom of God and 
its righteousness," he puts us into this very attitude. 
Seek, he says, first and always ; and no seeking, no 
search, worthy of the name, can be made without 
care. The matter turns, then, on the thing that is 
to engage our thought and care. Not meat and 
drink and raiment, not the things the Gentiles seek 
after ; let your search be after righteousness. Food 
and raiment will follow in the sure order of a wise 
and tender Providence, when you fill out the higher 
plan of your life. Put your solicitude, your careful 
thought, your strife, where it belongs, — in the realm 
of righteous obedience, — and there will be no oc- 
casion for anxiety elsewhere. Thus we see that 
Christ, when interpreted by himself, guards his 
thought against misinterpretation. 

But he was aiming more specially to secure a 
certain temper or condition of mind in respect to 
every-day life. The quality, the temper, the atmos- 
phere of life, was something with which Christ 
greatly concerned himself. For life is a fine and 
delicate thing, and requires favorable conditions. 
He strove to get it out from its needless hindrances 
and away from its useless burdens, and into a free 
and wholesome air. As he went about amongst 
men, he saw that they were burdened with a foolish 
anxiety as to the future, chiefly in regard to their 
physical wants. For the most part they had but 
one question, What shall we eat and drink and 
wear? The question ran off into the future, and 
brought back dark foreboding and mistrust ; and so 
all the energy and thought of life were absorbed in 



TRUST AND RIGHTEOUSNESS. 155 

these lower matters, leaving no room or strength 
for higher things. To clear the atmosphere of daily 
life, — this is what Christ is aiming at. 

Like everything else in this great discourse, it is a 
universal matter, it belongs to humanity. Anxiety 
for the future, fear of want, undue care for physical 
needs, — this is the common condition, this is what 
the Gentiles think about, but it is not to be so in the 
kingdom of God. 

Let us now carry the subject into our own daily 
lives. 

We are all of us more or less possessed by this 
anxiety. The greater part of our efforts turn upon 
providing for our future necessities, upon warding 
off the evils of poverty and dependence. So far we 
are quite right, for we are planted in the soil of this 
world ; we must first eat and drink and be clothed, 
and we must do this in the way of anticipation and 
forethought. No man has a right, if he can prop- 
erly avoid it, to face old age in poverty. A man 
cannot live as to his body from day to day ; he is 
constructed on the plan of prevision ; his natural 
life covers periods of non-production. No man ought 
to earn his bread in old age ; he must earn it before- 
hand. It is the vice and the degradation of multi- 
tudes that they do not. But when it comes to anx- 
iety and fret as to the future, it is another matter. 
And yet what is so natural, so inevitable — perhaps 
you say. We hardly deem it a fault; nay, to be 
caretaking and solicitous comes nigh being regarded 
as a virtue. Indeed Christ treats it more as a fault 
than as a vice, — tenderly rather than strenuously, 
— but no less as something to be overcome. 



156 TRUST AND RIGHTEOUSNESS. 

This spirit or habit of anxiety and worry over the 
future is something that we all condemn in ourselves, 
yet all share in. Now this is very strange, — human 
nature on both sides of a question, — two verdicts in 
one case, and both springing spontaneously from our 
minds ! It sets forth the contradiction in man, and 
the mystery of his relation to the world : yet only 
one verdict can be true ; to set aside the other is a 
good part of our business in the court of life. But 
there must be some powerful reason why we so gen- 
erally pronounce the false verdict. 

Why is man naturally anxious about the future ? 
Because, while a weak and finite being, he is opened 
to time. He knows to-morrow ; he sees the years 
before him ; he knows that he has wants and that 
these wants recur; he knows that only care and 
thought and labor will meet these wants ; he knows 
that he is weak, — that it is hard to wrest a living 
out of the world for to-day, while he has health 
and strength and opportunity ; he sees himself grow- 
ing weaker with age ; he sees tender, dependent chil- 
dren about him; he sees the uncertainty of the 
future, — its wants sure, but its means of supplying 
them not sure, but subject to a thousand adverse 
chances. 

There is thus a sort of antagonism bred in him, — 
time set before him, and himself a creature of to-day. 
He sees the future, but he cannot compass it ; it 
holds before him its wants and demands, but he is 
conscious of no force in himself adequate to meet 
them. I have hard work to get my bread to-day ; 
why, in all reason, should I not be anxious about to- 
morrow ? 



TRUST AND RIGHTEOUSNESS. 157 

So we all think, and the thought seems justified 
by our relation to the world. 

But if we will examine the thought, we shall see 
that it is made up of hard, cold calculation, — math- 
ematical, even. Now, human life is not based on 
mathematics. It is a very useful thing in building 
bridges and selling goods, and no man should attempt 
to live in this world without a strict habit of account- 
keeping, if for no other end than a sure payment of 
debts on either side of the ledger. But human life 
rests also on other sciences, and on principles that 
are not usually named as science, but which are the 
essence and end of all science. 

It is to these other principles that Christ directs 
us, and the main one is that of trust. The one cen- 
tral thought in his mind here is trust in God. But 
it is not a blind trust nor an irrational one, nor does 
it dispense with forethought and labor. On the con- 
trary, Christ takes pains to give us the reasons for 
it, — tells us why and how we may trust. These 
reasons are as solid as the world, as sure as the 
process of nature, as true as God himself. 

Let us now attend to them. 

We are put into the sure order of nature, and 
this order is one of supply of wants. 

Christ sends us to this world in his allusion to 
birds and flowers. Notice that he sends us to the 
harmless and beautiful and specially dependent ob- 
jects of nature, and not to the ravening and repulsive 
side of it, — as if he would connect our lives with 
what is fine and gentle and trustful ; and what sound 
in nature is so clear in its content as the note of a 



158 TRUST AND RIGHTEOUSNESS. 

bird ? — what bravery is so modest and assuring as 
that of a flower lifting up itself under the mighty 
heavens and facing all the fierce powers of the world ? 
It is often said that man " earns a living." It is 
true, but in a larger sense his living is provided 
for him, and his labor is merely supplementary, — to 
get it into shape and at hand. God named the world 
a garden, where he has put us with fruits and grains 
having their unfailing seeds of growth, and animals 
over which we have the mastery. Man has little to 
do but to take and eat. As he awakes in the world 
he finds all growing things needing only a little 
labor — that he himself also needs — to be turned 
into food. Water gushes from the spring; textures 
half-woven await his touch to be changed into 
raiment. A little transformation of the forest gives 
him shelter. Air and fire and water wait on him as 
humble ministers. The world is not only our dwell- 
ing-place, but it goes a long way towards providing 
a living, and making it reasonably certain. Here 
is where the blessedness of unvarying law comes in. 
We often look at these unyielding, immutable laws, 
and they seem hard and bitter because they do not 
shift to meet our shifting wants, but let us starve 
and shiver and bleed and die. But their unchange- 
ableness is their grand excellence. Thus only we 
learn to use them, and thus we have a basis of trust 
which becomes a reproof of anxiety. Their certainty 
is the complement of our uncertainty and weakness. 
If they changed as we change, what horrible uncer- 
tainty would follow ! Then, indeed, we might be 
anxious for the future. But if seed-time and harvest 



TRUST AND RIGHTEOUSNESS. 159 

do not fail, I shall not go hungry. If the sun rises 
to-morrow, I shall be lighted to my labor. If cattle 
and sheep feed on the hills or in barns, I shall be 
clothed and fed. 

Now, this sure order of nature is a call to trust. 
It is God's way of assuring me that my physical 
wants will be met. To doubt this and fall into 
anxiety, is to doubt that this sure order of nature 
will go on ; it is to presume that God will not be as 
good next year as he is this ; that some part of the 
system by which we are clothed and fed will give 
out. 

But perhaps you say : My anxiety does not reach 
so far as that, but only lest I may fail in my relation 
to it : there may be harvests, yet I may lack bread. 
But this only carries your anxiety and distrust of 
God into your relation to the world. Does not God 
put us here as he does the birds ? The fowls of the 
air must seek their food according to the laws of 
their being, and so must you according to the laws 
of your being ; and so you will be as surely fed, — 
nay more surely, for the laws of your being are 
surer than the instincts of birds. Moral laws have 
more certainty than physical laws. Or, in other 
words, God loves men more than he loves brutes, and 
has put them into surer methods. For a brute is 
subject to nature, but man can surmount and out- 
wit nature. There are two simple facts that are 
enough to shut out all this low distrust and wearing 
anxiety : the unchanging goodness of God, and the 
sure order of nature, — one being simply the expres- 
sion of the other. 



160 TRUST AND RIGHTEOUSNESS. 

We are pat under a law of righteousness, and 
this law also works towards a supply of wants. 
Christ says, Seek first the kingdom of God and its 
righteousness. Why does he say Jirst f Not merely 
because it is more important. It is indeed so ; but 
Christ by no means teaches the shallow and irra- 
tional lesson that if you give yourself to your higher 
duties, God will reward you by supplying your lower 
wants. This would be commercial, and not divine. 
There is no miracle, no break in the chain of cause 
and effect in his care for his children. One who 
thinks so may come to poverty and hunger on the 
knees of unceasing prayer. The full truth is, that 
one who seeks first and mainly the righteousness of 
God's kingdom will not come to want, because the 
habits and laws of righteousness will prevent it. 
For what is righteousness ? It is right-feeling and 
right-doing. A man who feels and thinks right, and 
does right, in these very ways provides for his fut- 
ure ; they conduce to supply. 

Put it now in the most practical light. A right- 
eous man is without vices, and vice is the chief 
breeder of poverty and want ; it is lawless passion 
that wastes resources, and unfits men to produce, and 
to earn a living. A righteous man is industrious, he 
is not righteous unless he is ; and industry is the 
sure pledge of future supply. A righteous man is 
intelligent up to the opportunity and capacity of his 
nature, and intelligence makes one master of the 
future. A righteous man is careful, thrifty, and ju- 
dicious ; the whole habit of the spiritual life leads 
to these qualities. It forbids waste, it teaches fore- 



TRUST AND RIGHTEOUSNESS. 161 

thought, it trains the judgment, it forbids indolence, 
and demands energy in whatever the hand finds to 
do; it makes men thoughtful, prudent, and sober; 
and these all are paths of prosperity. By teaching 
humility and simplicity, it leads away from luxurious 
and needless expenditure ; for, next to passion, there 
is no waster like pride. By inducing a life of thought, 
it shuts off those clamors of the lower nature that 
call for expensive indulgence. By teaching content- 
ment, it defends one against the consuming appeals 
of ambition and display and new sensations. By its 
law of stewardship, it forbids one to waste and 
squander, and makes expenditure a matter of con- 
science. By fostering dignity and self-respect and 
manhood, it teaches one to hate dependence, to earn 
one's own living, and so the productive energies are 
brought out and set to work. It steadies a man, 
clears his judgment, and secures that even and 
balanced action of his nature which is the basis of 
prosperity ; for not talent alone, not smartness nor 
luck, make a safe and rich future, but a sound and 
harmonious mind and a good conscience. Every law 
of Christ contemplates universal obedience ; when 
all obey, all will be full. The fruits of righteousness 
are more than enough for her children. 

Thus a righteous man, by the habit and law of his 
being, sows seed for the bread of to-morrow. He 
becomes rich in himself, is himself resources, capital, 
and a productive agent in all spheres. He comes 
into his promised supremacy over the world, nature 
and all beasts. This is the secret of the dominion 
granted him at the beginning, which was not given 



162 TRUST AND RIGHTEOUSNESS. 

to him as intelligent but as moral. It is the un- 
f alien Adam who has dominion over all things, and 
they who rise out of this fall, and come into the 
righteousness of Christ, thus get command of food 
and raiment and shelter, and all else needful ; thus 
they pass the flaming swords of the cherubim, re- 
enter the garden, and resume the dominion lost 
through sin. 

But righteousness gives us even surer grounds of 
trust than these. 

It puts a man into such relations to his fellow-men 
that it builds for him houses of habitation for all his 
mortal years. For righteousness inspires love and 
sympathy. A good man is never without friends. 
The inmost principle of righteousness is oneness — 
the oneness of love, — and thus it starts into action 
all those forces of sympathy, pity, and helpfulness 
that make men so ready to aid one another, to make 
common cause, to cast in their goods in common if 
needful, to bear one another's burdens. There is no 
brotherhood on earth, however bound together by 
oaths, so strong as that of good men. " Will you 
help this poor man ? " "I cannot tell — perhaps he 
is unworthy." " But he is a good man." " Ah, then 
I cannot refuse." 

One sometimes sees a narrowly good man — one 
who has misconceived the nature of goodness, " one 
whom a little grain of conscience has made sour," 
good in a certain way, but ungenerous, unsympa- 
thetic — come to want, but never one who has caught 
the large, noble, and tender spirit of Christ. Such a 
man builds himself into the hearts of all men ; he 



TRUST AND RIGHTEOUSNESS. 163 

creates debts of gratitude in others ; he lays up 
treasure in the bosoms of multitudes that may be 
surely drawn on. I do not refer to gifts of charity, 
so called, — a righteous man seldom needs these, — 
but to that friendly spirit and support that almost 
every man requires at times. Alas ! for the man 
who has no friends in the hard crises of his life ! 
But a good man, a truly righteous man, is never with- 
out them. The future is uncertain, and chance and 
change play many tricks with us, but there is no 
provision against them comparable with that spirit- 
ual yet human love begotten by like love. It is bet- 
ter than bank, or bond, or land, for these are subject 
to the chance and mischance of a changing world : 
but the trust of man in man, the love of heart for 
heart, the oneness of spiritual sympathy — these never 
fail. When one lives in these righteous ways, he 
makes a friend of all humanity, and its helping hand 
is like the hand of God himself. 

Be righteously true to your fellow-men, and you 
need have no anxiety for the future. " I have been 
young and now am old; yet have I not seen the 
righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread ; " — 
says the Psalmist. Why? Because "he is ever 
merciful, and lendeth." 

And thus Christ saves us from anxiety and fore- 
boding by simply putting us into the eternal order 
of righteousness. It takes us up, as it were, in arms, 
and bears us safely through life, — every real want 
met, every calamity averted or broken in its power 
to hurt. That one should not be fed and clothed 
who has come into this order, would be like going 



164 TRUST AND RIGHTEOUSNESS. 

to a feast and finding no food, or into a forest and 
finding no shade ; the one carries the other. 

"Trust," says Christ, "be not anxious." Yes; 
but trust according to the plan. There is no true 
trust but in righteousness and its eternal laws, yet 
such trust may be entire. 

One final question comes up in regard to the 
subject. Why does Christ, in this inaugural dis- 
course, devote so much time to such a matter as 
anxiety, — a thing that hardly comes within the 
range of morals ? We do not call it a sin, nor did 
he. It never awakens in us pangs of conscience : 
it is but a misfortune if we are given to it ; a simple 
fault if we indulge in it. Surely there is hardly any 
imperfection of our frail humanity that we regard so 
leniently. But Christ, nevertheless, treated it as 
a matter of great importance ; and the reason is 
evident. First, — it is a source of great unhappiness. 
It was a main purpose with Christ to lessen the heavy 
burden of misery that presses on the human heart ; 
it is crushed, not only under its sin, but under its 
sorrow. And so he told men how to cast it off, 
and to trust in God. He showed them that the two 
kingdoms of nature and righteousness are pledged 
to take care of them ; that these two everlasting 
arms of God are under them ! 

Who does not thank him for the assurance ! If 
we could but get rid of this foolish anxiety ; if we 
could but stop saying, What shall we eat, and 
what shall we drink, and wherewithal shall we be 
clothed in this dread future before us, I think a good 
part of our unhappiness would have an encj. 



TRUST AND RIGHTEOUSNESS. 165 

But Christ had a more imperative reason, — 
namely, to create an atmosphere of peace about the 
soul. Character requires a still air. There may be 
storm and upheaval around, but there must be peace 
within for the soul to thrive. But anxiety is the 
reverse of peace. It teases the mind with questions 
that it cannot answer ; it broods over possible evil ; 
it peoples the future with dark shapes ; it frets the 
sensibilities with worrying conjecture. It spoils the 
present by loading it with the evil of to-morrow. 
Its tendency is, by dwelling on evil, to make us cow- 
ardly and selfish. Character cannot grow in such 
an atmosphere. Hence, as a matter of fact, we sel- 
dom find any great height and sweetness of character 
in an anxious-minded person, for the simple reason 
that it has no chance to grow ; all the forces go in 
other directions. But when one, in wise and right- 
eous ways, has learned to trust in God, and so has 
come into peace, then the seeds of all grace and 
beauty spring up, and spread out their leaves in the 
calm, warm air, and blossom out into full beauty — 
fed from beneath and above. 

It was to secure an atmosphere for an end so 
eternally important as this, that Christ spoke these 
words. 

Oh, how wise the teaching! How blessed to be 
able to receive it ! 



THE TWOFOLD FORCE IN SALVA- 
TION. 



" God and man are so near together, so belong to one another, 
that not a man by himself, but a man and God, is the true nnit of 
being 1 and power. The human -will in such sympathetic submission 
to the divine will, that the divine will may flow into it and fill it, 
and yet never destroy its individuality ; my thoughts filled with the 
thought of One who, I know, is different from me while he is un- 
speakably close to me ; — are not these the consciousnesses of which 
all souls that have been truly religious have been aware?"—' 
Rev. Phillips Brooks, D. D., Baccalaureate Sermon at Harvard 
College, 1884. 

' O power to do ! baffled will ! 
prayer and action! ye are one." 

J. G. Whittieb. 

"Anyone who could see quite through himself would seem to 
have come to an end of himself ; he alone who is gradually discov- 
ering himself is entitled to take an interest in his own existence." 
— Lotze, Microcosmus, p. 12. 

' ' One half from earth, one half from heaven, 
Was that mysterious blessing given, 

Just as his life had been 
One half in heaven, one half on earth, 
Of earthly toil and heavenly mirth 
A wondrous woven scene." 

F. W. Fabeb, St. Philip's Death. 

11 Just as it is the distinction of a crystal, that it is transparent, 
able to let the light into and through its close flinty body, and be 
irradiated by it in the whole mass of its substance, without being at 
all more or less distinctly a crystal, so it is the grand distinction of 
humanity, that it is made permeable by the divine nature, prepared 
in that manner to receive and entemple the Infinite Spirit ; to be 
energized by him and filled with his glory in every faculty, feeling, 
and power." — Hobace Bushnell, Sermons for the New Life, p. 31. 



THE TWOFOLD FORCE IN SALVATION. 



Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling ; for it is 
God which worketh in you both to will and to work, for his good 
pleasure. — Phlleppians ii. 12, 13. 

This sentence falls from the lips of St. Paul as 
easy and natural as his breath. It has no particular 
emphasis, no special importance. It is not a climax 
either of thought or feeling ; it is not a definition ; 
it shows no trace of a long or careful process of 
thought of which it is the conclusion. It has not 
the force of a score of other passages, and evidently 
was not framed to express a fundamental truth, far 
less to determine a controverted point. It is a 
casual remark, dropped almost incidentally ; true, 
but not combating any specific error ; important, but 
not specially important. As it came from St. Paul 
it was a simple, natural, almost commonplace ex- 
hortation to earnestness, with the encouragement 
that God would cooperate ; as any one of us might 
say to another : " Work with all your might and 
God will help you." But what St. Paul said in this 
casual way has been caught up by opposing schools 
of thought, turned to a use he never dreamed of, 
crowded with meaning that he did not intend, made 



170 THE TWOFOLD FORCE IN SALVATION. 

the rallying cry of theological champions, and a 
very body of divinity. It is an illustration of how 
Scripture is often misused by having meanings read 
into it. In St. Paul's day, the controversy as to 
faith and works had not arisen, at least in its mod- 
ern form. St. Paul did indeed assert that the w T orks 
of the Jewish ritual are of no value, and that faith is 
the vital principle of character, — not what a man 
does, but what he believes is the main thing, for 
belief carries action and covers the whole nature ; 
but of the modern question between Arminian and 
Calvinist he had not the slightest conception. But 
Arminian and Calvinist seized this phrase, cut it in 
two, emphasized each his own word in it according 
to his philosophy, and, thus equipped, fought each 
other for two hundred years or more over a doc- 
trine of faith and works. But the controversy is 
practically at an end ; the victory is with neither, or 
rather with both ; so that we can go back to these 
words of gracious encouragement, and read them in 
the same simple, natural way in which they were first 
written. 

Now, what does St. Paul say ? Simply this : 
Strive for your salvation ; work it out yourself ; do 
not rely on others ; it is your own matter, and a very 
serious one, hence be earnest about it ; do not trifle 
nor take it for granted that you will be saved ; if 
you ever see salvation you must work for it with fear 
and trembling, or you may fail of it. But at the 
same time remember, for your encouragement, that 
while you work, God also works in you ; he wills in 
your will, he acts in your act. If you are earnest in 



THE TWOFOLD FORCE IN SALVATION. 171 

this matter and have an honest heart about it, you 
may rely on the fact that God is at work in you, 
the soul and energy of the whole process. 

Such and so simple is the thought. But simple 
as it is, it teaches several important lessons. 

I. That salvation is an achievement. First let us 
see what is here meant by salvation. It does not 
mean anything done by Christ in the way of expia- 
tion or removing hindrances. If such things enter 
into salvation, they are not the things that a man 
himself is to work out. Nor does it mean getting 
to heaven. A man does not enter heaven in order 
to find salvation, but because he has already been 
saved. Heaven is the result ; salvation is the pro- 
cess. Nor is it an immediate work, wrought in some 
hour of deep feeling or full surrender. What is 
done at such a time may be a very important part 
of salvation, but it is not so much of it that one can 
say after such an experience : " I have found salva- 
tion." It may be a great mistake to say this, for it 
may lead one to confound the first step with the 
whole journey, and to sit down satisfied with what 
has already been done. Evidently it was not such 
an experience that St. Paul had in mind when he 
said : " Work out your salvation ; " but rather a 
moral process in which time and effort are chief fac- 
tors ; a moral process, I say. If a man has any 
sinful habits, he must overcome them ; if he has any 
lacks or weaknesses, he must work to supply the 
deficiency. And then there is the great reality of 
character — a welded group of qualities that only 
comes about by elaboration. The qualities may 



172 THE TWOFOLD FORCE IN SALVATION. 

have a natural root or ground, but each one must be 
worked out ; it must come under the conscience and 
the will ; it must be tried and shaped and fed and 
worked into the substance of the character. When 
all good qualities are so wrought out and united in 
a man, he may be said to have achieved a character ; 
and, so far as he is concerned, to have worked out 
his salvation. 

II. Another thing taught here is, that this achieve- 
ment of salvation is at the cost of sharp and defi- 
nite strife. 

There is something to be done in the world by 
every man born into it, that can only be wrought 
in this way, namely : a certain change or achieve- 
ment in character gained by the man's own effort. 
It is a process and an undertaking that must be de- 
liberately chosen and steadfastly pursued year after 
year. Of other forces that enter in and help, I shall 
speak farther on ; but first of all it must be under- 
stood that every man is bound, by every considera- 
tion of duty and self - regard, by every law of his 
nature, by the sense of his destiny, by the sense of 
his condition and of the meaning of life, to under- 
take a certain work called salvation. We are here 
in the world to do this very thing, and to do little 
else. I am well aware that what is called the work 
of life is a complex thing, and may be stated in 
many ways. The first duty assigned to man was to 
people and subdue the earth ; the next, to drive out 
savagery and build up civilization. Another work is 
to perfect society, to overcome tyranny, and establish 
just and merciful institutions ; another is to dispel 



THE TWOFOLD FORCE IN SALVATION. 173 

ignorance and create intelligence ; another is to get 
rid of whatever is vicious and low and brutal and 
coarse, and bring in whatever is pure and high and 
noble and fine. But if you look closely at these 
works, you will see that they are all works of deliver- 
ance and rescue, — evil overcome and good achieved. 
They are not simply natural processes, like the 
growth of a tree, or an animal that passes from one 
stage of perfection to another ; they are not devel- 
opments from lower to higher as in the natural 
world, but changes in which evil is cast out by 
struggle and suffering. There is no evil to be got 
rid of in a sapling or a young lion. In the world 
of nature the steps are from less to more, from good 
to better, from lower to higher, and each is beautiful 
and good in its time and degree. But it is not so 
with man, nor is his growth such as this. When he 
comes upon the stage he finds evil, and his work is 
to cast it out and bring in good. -He cannot stand 
still and look at humanity as he looks at a tree, and 
say : " See how it grows ; see how it develops its 
inborn forces." Instead, he finds evils and wrongs 
that are one with humanity, and yet are no proper 
part of it. He sees barbarism ; that must be over- 
come. He sees tyranny and cruelty and vice ; these 
must be fought down. He sees ignorance ; that 
must be dispelled. He sees injustice, greed, pride, 
selfishness ; these must be eradicated. None of 
these things go out of themselves ; they are not out- 
grown nor sloughed by natural process, nor left be- 
hind in a passive development of society, but always 
and everywhere men have felt themselves called to 



174 THE TWOFOLD FORCE IX SALVATION. 

fight against them. Evil is overcome by struggle, 
by sharp, distinct, positive effort, and by effort in- 
volving suffering and sacrifice. No nation and no 
man ever yet grew into virtue, or dropt evil as a 
tree sheds its dead leaves. 

My point is this : all these various works that are 
commonly assigned to man are works of deliverance 
or salvation ; they resolve themselves at last to that 
complexion and properly take on such designation. 
You can have no better or truer name for this 
great world-work of man than salvation. Society 
in all its struggle and upheaval is first of all saving 
itself, working out of and away from its evils. Look 
at the world and its history. What is it but a history 
of struggle with evil? What else has the world 
been trying to do but to save itself from its evils ? 
Look at society. What is its main effort and strug- 
gle but to check and to put away its evils ? What 
is the main function of government, institutions, edu- 
cation, but conflict with evil? Turn it about, and 
say that the end of society is to develop and har- 
monize humanity, that the evil is incidental and will 
fall away as man moves towards his perfect human- 
ity. State it thus if you prefer, but tell me if every 
step is not attended by a conflict with evil, with bad 
conditions, and if this is not by far the greater part 
of the work in hand. Tell me if a single gain has 
been made that did not turn upon an overthrow of 
some positive evil which was the main factor in the 
operation. Call the progress of society development 
if you prefer, but you do not name it by its largest 
feature. Salvation is better, because truer and more 



THE TWOFOLD FORCE IN SALVATION. 175 

philosophical ; it recognizes the main factor, the pro- 
cess, and the beneficent result ; it is a better use of 
language. It is well to name things properly, and 
they are properly named when they are truly de- 
scribed. Thus the Protestant Reformation is rightly 
designated because it recognizes the evil condition, 
the process of recovery, and the end accomplished. 
So salvation, as a name for the general work of hu- 
manity, is a proper term, because it recognizes the 
evils of society, the rescue from them, and the good 
result. It is not only philosophically true, but it 
has a warm and joyful note ; it has a human inter- 
est ; the heart throbs with it and the mind leaps into 
exulting ecstasy with it : — 

' ' Salvation, oh, salvation ! 
The joyful sound proclaim." 

Let us not be ashamed of the old Scriptural names 
and terms that describe the march of humanity. 
Keep the cant out of them, but hold on to the reality 
they describe. It will be a sorry day for the world 
when this great process through which it is moving 
is called by any other name than salvation. Christ 
and his church struck to the root of the matter and 
penetrated to the utmost secret of the world in the 
use of this word. 

As salvation is the great world-business, the main 
thing that humanity has to do, so is it the main 
thing every man has to do. Hence the first and 
constantly recurring question every man should ask 
himself is, Am I saving myself ? I am ignorant ; am 
I saving myself from that state ? I find in myself 
hereditary evil, — faults, defects, proclivities of one 



17.6 THE TWOFOLD FORCE IN SALVATION. 

sort and another ; am I saving myself from these ? 
I have contracted evil habits and appetites ; am I 
casting them out? I have mean dispositions, — to 
indolence, to moral cowardice, to self-complacence, 
to petty rivalry, to contempt of others, to censorious- 
ness, to evil-speaking, to petulance or anger, to hard- 
ness and revenge, to easy toleration of existing evils, 
to a low standard of conduct ; am I seeking to be 
saved from these ? I am absorbed in business, and 
in danger of forgetting that I have fellow-men about 
me to be helped and benefited ; am I saving myself 
from that tendency ? I am fast becoming a slave to 
avarice ; am I saving myself from that hell ? I am 
getting involved in the whirl of fashion and display 
and vain pleasure, — a being to be merely diverted ; 
am I saving myself from that still deeper pit of 
perdition ? I am passing on from day to day with- 
out moral earnestness, without communion with God, 
doing nothing for humanity, for the community, for 
my neighbors, for the little children in the street, for 
the ignorant and suffering about me, nothing high 
and good for myself or for others ; am I striving to 
escape from this broad road to destruction ? 

Some may say that it is better to take the positive 
view, and to strike straight for good conduct and the 
virtues, without looking off upon this negative side 
of escape and deliverance. But the negative and 
positive, evil and good, are so mingled in this world 
that we cannot shut our eyes to one and look only for 
the other. Evil is a reality ; a fault or a vice or a 
defect is a positive as well as a negative thing, a fact 
as well as a lack, and facts must always be recog- 



THE TWOFOLD FOECE IN SALVATION. 177 

nized. If one has a mean, miserly strain in him, or 
a lustful taint, or a dull, earthy spirit, it is as real 
as the corresponding virtue, and one must first know 
it as such before oue can reach the virtue. The sailor 
must not only keep his ship headed for the port and 
bend his sails to catch every helpful wind, but even 
before he does this and as more important, he must 
know what shoals lie in his course, what headlands 
intercept it, what currents tend to sweep him out 
of his reckoning, and what weaknesses there may 
be in his ship. The sailor must save his vessel from 
its dangers before it can make its voyage. And so 
there enters into every man's life first a work of sal- 
vation. Save yourself from your evil ; cast out, cut 
off, drive away, the evil that has got into your heart 
and life, and rooted itself in your habits and disposi- 
tions. This is the first half of salvation ; then you 
are ready to be saved. For the elimination of evil 
is not salvation. The house swept clean is not a 
home. A man with no faults or vices is not fault- 
less nor virtuous. When the house of his heart is 
swept clean and the faulty or vicious disposition 
is brought under control, then there opens before 
him the great positive work of salvation ; then he 
may begin to build himself up into the proportions 
of true spiritual manhood. 

III. I come now to speak of this process as it is 
described in the text : " Work out your own salva- 
tion with fear and trembling ; for it is God which 
worketh in you both to will and to work, for his good 
pleasure," — a twofold process, you perceive. But 
one process seems almost to antagonize the other. 



178 THE TWOFOLD FORCE IN SALVATION. 

St. Paul says, Work it out yourself ; do not rely on 
something or somebody else ; it is your own affair. 
The words breathe a spirit of absolute independence ; 
they imply the possibility and even necessity that a 
man should save himself ; but in the same breath he 
introduces a helper and complicates the process, and 
even seems to take the heart and meaning out of it, 
— your own salvation ; work it out for yourself ; then 
it will be your own indeed. This is plain enough. 
But he does not leave it so ; another is brought in 
who does it all : God works in you to will and to 
work. Here is confusion and contradiction enough. 
The wind of inspiration blows east and west at the 
same time. Let us rise into higher regions and see if 
we cannot strike a current that sets in one directiou. 
We find here one of the plainest illustrations of a 
doctrine that is now coming into fuller recognition 
than it has had since its first Hebraic and Christian 
utterance, namely, the doctrine of the Divine Im- 
manence, or the actual presence and residence of 
God in all things and beings, the life of all lives, the 
force in all forces, the soid of all being. The Hebrew 
nation was steeped in this truth ; it made it an in- 
spired nation. Christ planted himself upon it, and 
gave to it its highest and most spiritual expression. 
St. John echoes Christ's own words. St. Paul put 
it into a sharp and eternal definition, " In him we 
live and move and have our being." It is the sep- 
aration of this truth from an external, mechanical 
conception of God, and the recovery of it to its 
original force and meaning, that underlies the 
quickened religious thought of the age, and that is 



THE TWOFOLD FORCE IN SALVATION. 179 

serving it so well in its conflict with naturalism. 
Without this doctrine, the church of to-day would 
be swept into the gulf of atheism. God in and 
under and behind all things and all beings, — this 
is eternal rock and sure foothold. The world does 
not exist by itself ; it exists in God. Man does 
not live, machine-like, by himself ; he lives and 
moves and has and holds his being in God. His 
energy and force are not his own, but flow out of 
God. He has indeed a free will, but God is the 
source of it ; but because it is a free will God can 
only act with it and by its consent. He is not, how- 
ever, excluded from this realm of our nature. God 
may enter the will and fill it with power and work 
with it, without impairing its nature or injuring the 
value of its action. 

This seems to be St. Paul's thought here. Use 
your will, work out your salvation with fear and 
trembling, — that is, in humble, dead earnestness ; 
when you so work, God is working with you. By 
virtue of your honesty and earnestness and humility, 
God is present, mingling so closely with your efforts 
that you cannot tell how much is yours and how 
much his. It is all his ; it is all yours ; it is each ; 
it is both ; it is neither alone ; together they are one. 

No other influence can touch a man like God's. 
When I give you my hand, it is in part my strength 
that upholds you. When you cheer or inspire me, 
I am leaning on your inspiration. But when God 
works in a man to will and to work, the union of 
wills is so close, that separate threads of influence 
cannot be detected. The one indivisible current is 



180 THE TWOFOLD FORCE IN SALVATION. 

flowing in one tide through the man's heart, and 
thus all the benefit of the action is reaped by the 
man. There is no longer any conflict between work- 
ing out your own salvation and God working in you. 
It often hurts a man to be helped by others ; it 
surely hurts him to be helped much, but it never 
hurts a man to be helped by God. The energy that 
he imparts does not subtract from a man's own, 
nor beget a sense of undue dependence, nor induce 
a relaxation of the sinews of his will, nor lessen the 
value of its action. 

Consider now how important it is that we should 
recognize this twofold process in salvation. St. 
Paul never forgot it, and no wise man ever does. 
No such man omits God either in the struggle of 
life, or in the process of salvation, or in the building 
of character. Now suppose God were left out in 
this process and man saved himself. Suppose, if it 
were possible, that a man alone and without help, 
without God, could overcome all his weaknesses and 
faults and evil habits, could purify his heart so that 
he should not lust after evil, could so train and 
harden his will that he could resist all temptation, 
could so chasten his mind that he would love only 
what is true and high. Suppose he could so train 
and develop himself that his faculties should work 
harmoniously, — mind clear and strong, desires 
high, judgment firm, tastes pure, social and domestic 
instincts duly heeded, and so come to be a wise, 
strong, good man, but without any conscious help 
from God, the whole wrought by himself, — what 
sort of a man would you have ? Assuredly a con- 



THE TWOFOLD FORCE IN SALVATION. 181 

ceited man, who at last will become a selfish one. 
His achievement is his own ; why should he not 
be proud ? And, as his whole struggle has been in 
and about himself, he inevitably grows into a fixed 
state of self-consciousness. His thought is not for 
another, but for himself, and, by the very law of his 
being, he gravitates towards selfishness. An illus- 
tration is seen in Goethe, — the most thoroughly 
trained and self-developed man of his century, but 
one whose sense of God as entering into the pro- 
cess was but faint, and whose character is not re- 
deemable from the charge of selfishness. Such men 
are not rare, and they are growing frequent under 
modern theories of culture, but they are not lovely ; 
they do not win, nor move, nor do the best things. 
They break an eternal law, and suffer a correspond- 
ing defeat. A man cannot isolate himself in sharp 
individuality from man and God, and live. If he 
shuts himself off from man, he withers and shrinks 
into nothingness. If he separates himself from God, 
he fails in height and also in depth of character ; 
he limits himself ; he gets no higher than the earth, 
stays within the circle of the present world, and 
never outgrows it. And so there comes about that 
saddest of all sights, — a divine being working in 
the world of mere things, an immortal being shut- 
ting himself up in time, an enduring, feeling, think- 
ing being slowly but surely leaving behind him all 
that he knows or cares for, and entering into years 
of age vacant of anything to feed his mind or sup- 
ply his heart. No ! It is a sad experiment that so 
many are making, — trying to live a worthy life 



182 THE TWOFOLD FORCE IN SALVATION. 

without God. If they succeed, the result is faulty, 
and in any case it is sad. 

Suppose, again, that God alone saved a man, with- 
out effort of his own. Suppose that he shut up every 
path of evil so that there should be no play of will 
and choice. Suppose that by some divine alchemy 
the soul could be whitened of all stains of evil while 
man remained passive. Suppose legions of angels 
could descend in great crises of temptation and fight 
our battles for us. Suppose divine grace were so 
poured out that the spirit should be kept in a passive 
ecstasy before divine things. Suppose we were car- 
ried as children in arms through all the strife and 
labor of life, — what would be the result? Worse 
than in the previous case. It were better that a 
man should save himself alone than that he should 
do nothing and God do all. Neither is possible, but 
each is a way that is attempted. Many men try to 
get on without God, and many, in one way or an- 
other, are weakly trusting in God to save them. • Is 
it not possible that some who are cherishing what 
they call a hope, who have professed religion, who 
joined the church, who think that once — years ago 
— they were converted and found salvation, are 
making this mistake, simply expecting that God will 
save them, but how or why is not quite clear ? 

Not to such a key does St. Paul sound this 
trumpet-blast of appeal. No man could believe 
more fully that God and God only saves us ; but it 
is only as we work out our own salvation. It is 
salvation because it is worked out, — not awaited, not 
trusted for, not left to chance, not a matter of some 



THE TWOFOLD FORCE IN SALVATION. 183 

bright hour, not a thing of church, nor of divine 
decree, nor of divine mercy, nor of probable out- 
come in future worlds, but a process of action that 
by this very quality secures the end of salvation. 
For salvation is character ; it is perfected manhood ; 
it is evil cast out and good achieved ; it is the will 
practiced in righteousness ; it is the flight of the soul 
into heaven on the two pinions of love of man and 
love of God: stop their united beat for one moment 
and it drops away from the heaven of salvation. 

Now suppose again that, by an inextricable pro- 
cess, God and man unite in the work of salvation, 
what is the result ? I can only hint the unimpeach- 
able answer. When a man recognizes that God is 
at the bottom of all his work, he is led straight up to 
the exercise of every grace and element of character. 
Then he becomes reverent, and reverence is one half 
of character, — the fear of God is the beginning 
and well-nigh the whole of wisdom. Along with it 
comes humility, — the soil of all the virtues, the at- 
mosphere of all noble character. And, as the man 
comes more and more to feel that God is in him and 
with him, he is swept into the current of God's 
own thoughts and feelings, and so he loves as God 
loves ; and all the patience, the tenderness, the pity, 
the truth, the justice, the majesty of God, brood 
over him and work in him, subduing him unto their 
own quality. Oh, it is a great thing for a man to 
let God in upon him ! For in God he finds himself, 
and in God he is led up to every duty, and into paths 
of illimitable desire, and so on into oneness with 
God himself. 



FAITH ESSENTIAL RIGHTEOUSNESS. 



" Through faith man comes into the life of God, the life of love 
and righteousness. This is the true life of man. This is the 
foundation of the life of the family and the nation, and, though it 
may not seem justified in the physical process, without it — 

' ' ' The pillared firmament is rottenness, 
And earth's base built on stubble.' " 
Elisha Mulford, LL. D. , The Republic of God, p. 179. 

' ' Believe and trust. Through stars and suns, 

Through life and death, through soul and sense, 
His wise, paternal purpose runs ; 
The darkness of his providence 
Is star-lit with benign intents. 

" O joy supreme ! I know the Voice, 
Like none beside on earth or sea ; 
Yea, more, soul of mine, rejoice : 
By all that he requires of me, 
I know what God himself must be." 

J. G. Whittter, Revelation. 

" God grant us to be among those who wish to be really justified 
by faith, by being made just persons by faith, — who cannot satisfy 
either their conscience or their reason by fancying that God looks 
on them as right when they know themselves to be wrong ; and who 
cannot help trusting that union with Christ must be something real 
and substantial, and not merely a metaphor and a flower of rhetoric." 
— Charles Kcstgsley. 

' ' Philamon had gone forth to see the world, and he had seen it ; 
and he had learnt that God's kingdom was not a kingdom of fanatics 
yelling for a doctrine, but of willing, loving, obedient hearts." — 
Charles Kingsley. 



FAITH ESSENTIAL RIGHTEOUSNESS. 



And he believed in the Lord ; and he counted it to him for right- 
eousness. — Genesis xv. 6. 

The story of Abraham is permeated with this two- 
fold fact : he believed in God, and this faith was 
regarded as actual righteousness, because, in the large 
view, it answered the ends of righteousness. 

When the relation of character to conduct is fully 
understood, it is seen that faith is righteousness ; the 
flower of character grows from the root of belief. 
Conduct is the all-important environment of char- 
acter, but is no essential part of it. 

I take this great principle which St. Paul elabo- 
rated, and which became the key-note of the Protes- 
tant Reformation, — a principle that will be fully 
vindicated only in later and higher stages of human 
society, — and place it before us somewhat as a flag 
or pennant, while we make a general study of the 
man who first illustrated it. 

In Abraham we have not only the beginnings 
of history, but of biography. He is the first man 
of whom we have any clear conception. Enoch 
" walked with God," and Noah " feared God," but 
these comprehensive words do not carry with them a 



188 FAITH ESSENTIAL RIGHTEOUSNESS. 

definite portraiture of individual character. But we 
have enough of Abraham's life to know something 
of his nature, — what sort of a man he was, how he 
felt and thought, and from what motives he acted. 
Still the picture is not wholly clear as we trace it 
along those ancient pages, so unlike in their parts, so 
various in their sources, so different in their tones, 
— now" firm and distinct as if uttered by the genius 
of history itself, now flowing in idyllic strains, now 
shadowy with remote traditions, now wearing the 
form of a dream or vision recorded as fact, now sug- 
gesting a mythical use of natural events for moral 
ends. It is like a summer morning when the vapors 
envelop the landscape: here and there a headland 
stands out in the conquering sunlight ; a glint of 
waters ; the outline of a forest, faintly discerned, but 
without definite lines ; the seen melting vaguely into 
the unseen, where the eye of sense yields to the eye 
of the imagination. 

The narrative here and elsewhere in Genesis pre- 
sents too many questions to be discussed at present. 
Rather than attempt it, it is better to avoid explan- 
atory theories and trust to a trained and intelligent 
sense of language, under some such guiding prin- 
ciple as " the letter killeth, the spirit maketh alive." 
Literalism is fatal to any rational conception of the 
history of Abraham. To hold that Jehovah ate flesh 
in a tent, is to outdo heathen anthropomorphism. To 
impatiently reject the whole as a tissue of mythical 
traditions, is to cast away possible pearls ; it is also 
scientific, for science is now getting to a point where 
it deals with the shadowy and the uncertain, and 



FAITH ESSENTIAL RIGHTEOUSNESS. 189 

often reverses their apparent character. To take 
what we find and extract its moral, without care as 
to its form, is the better if not the only way ; and, if 
we lose anything through the shadowy and elusive 
character of the narrative, it is made up in its natural- 
ness, its simplicity, and its evident honesty. The 
depicting strokes are few, but they are reliable. Not 
much is said of Abraham, but whatever is said is 
full of light. 

The chief value of a study of the ancient He- 
brew characters lies in the fact that they disclose 
truth through life rather than by speculation. They 
live out truth in an actual process. Their conduct 
is a direct response to motives ; it is largely sponta- 
neous, or, as we say, natural. The Hebrew is not a 
logician ; he has no dialectic ; and, when he attempts 
the use of logic, he soon abandons it, as in Job, and 
returns to the Hebrew method of practical experi- 
ence and direct vision, or as in St. Paul, who often 
begins a logical process, but forgets it or uses it care- 
lessly or inconsequently, and finally falls back on 
intuition and assertion. The Hebrew has no formal 
logic, but he is not therefore illogical. His life al- 
ways has in it what may be called a human order, 
because it is spontaneous and is not warped and lim- 
ited by speculation. The successive phases of his 
history are united by strict premise and conclusion, 
but the bond is his actual experience, not his specu- 
lations. Hence he illustrates truth well, shows how 
conduct and character are made up ; his creed and 
his life, his philosophy and his religion, are one. 
Truth so revealed is clearer and more authoritative 



190 FAITH ESSENTIAL RIGHTEOUSNESS. 

than when reached by dialectic methods. Life and 
conduct tell but one story, but a process of reason- 
ing always suggests the possibility of another process 
equally sound and with some other conclusion. It is 
not till we come to a dialectic age that we begin to 
find that strange and unnatural conflict between 
faith and reason — at once horrible and grotesque 
— which is seen in a church that persecutes, that 
forces belief, and turns a Gospel into a doom. A 
Hebrew might possibly have combined in his con- 
duct inconsistencies equally great, but he would not 
have tried to justify himself by a process of reason- 
ing. Compare a character like Balaam with such a 
one as Hildebrand or Torquemada, or David with 
Cromwell. David is plain and clear even in his con- 
tradictions, but who can trace the working of such 
a mind as Cromwell's ? The theology of Isaiah is 
simple and consistent, as natural as life, because it 
is never far from life, but what relation to human 
life or to the Gospel has the theology of Calvin? 
Hence the Hebrew mind could easily be made the 
vehicle of a revelation ; it accurately reflected im- 
pressions and was sensitive to them, and it inter- 
preted them into words and acts without modifica- 
tion. The Hebrew acted as he felt, spoke as he 
saw, thought in a simple and direct way on his ex- 
periences ; the thing that he clearly saw and deeply 
felt was to him the word of God. Hence the great 
value of a study of Hebrew characters. They are 
like fine art, — full of truth and revelation ; they 
have in them the logic of human nature, and so far 
as they embody religion they express it truly. 



FAITH ESSENTIAL RIGHTEOUSNESS. 191 

It is an interesting fact that the first distinct char- 
acter in human history sets forth the greatest of all 
truths, namely, that faith in God is essential right- 
eousness. If it be a coincidence, it is a moving one, 
and one that suggests a Providence rather than 
chance. Treat it as we may, we can never cease to 
wonder at the fact that, as the mists of antiquity 
clear away and disclose the first historical man, we 
behold one who is magnificently illustrating the 
truth of all ages, that faith constitutes character ; 
for so we may interpret the assertion that Abra- 
ham's belief in God was counted to him for right- 
eousness. To the Jews of St. Paul's day, who had 
for generations been trained under a ceremonial law, 
it was not plain that righteousness turned on faith ; 
but the thinker of to-day finds no difficulty in ac- 
cepting it unless he puts fictitious meanings upon 
faith and righteousness. If faith be regarded as a 
vague and magical thing, and not as downright, 
thorough-going belief and confidence, and if right- 
eousness be regarded as some vague and magical 
condition instead of right behavior, there is still 
room for perplexity. There is no better way of get- 
ting a clear conception of this truth than by study- 
ing it in this first example of it. 

Abraham's faith was counted for righteousness 
because it worked chiefly in the field of natural rela- 
tions, which is the main field of righteousness. His 
faith was not a mere state of mind, but an active 
principle at work in the every-day fields of life. 
He finds himself surrounded by idolatry, and so gets 
away from it, puts the river and the desert between 



192 FAITH ESSENTIAL RIGHTEOUSNESS. 

his household and the nature-worship of Chaldea. 
He finds a mysterious hope dwelling within him that 
he shall become the founder of a great nation, and 
so he seeks a country where this hope can be fulfilled. 
He finds himself a stranger amongst heathen, and 
he strenuously remains a stranger, keeps apart from 
them, asserts his superiority, preserves the peace, 
but will come under no obligation, pays for what 
he receives, and allows no intermarriage with them. 
Questions arise between Lot and himself as to pas- 
turage ; he treats the affair with lofty and tender 
generosity, and trusts in God to do as well in rocky 
Hebron as in the valley of Jordan. His kinsman is 
captured and he bravely rescues him, worshiping on 
the way and paying tithes to the mystical king of 
Salem, — a warrior and a worshiper at the same 
time. He illustrates both a tender humanity and a 
sense of the practical value of righteousness and of 
its saving power, by pleading for the preservation of 
Sodom, placing himself in this matter on the very 
highest plane of conduct. In his family relations 
he symbolizes the divine character, — the father of 
the gentle and obedient son of promise, and of the 
turbulent child of the bond-woman ; but he yearns 
over each alike : " O that Ishmael might live before 
thee ! " So God yearns over all his children, even 
those whom a jealousy calling itself social wisdom 
has driven into the desert of despair. But, like 
God, Abraham can await the unfolding of time, and 
so does the thing that needs to be done at present 
— sends Hagar into the wilderness, and suffers his 
fortunes to concentrate upon Isaac ; for even so wis- 
dom and love often seem to conflict. 



FAITH ESSENTIAL RIGHTEOUSNESS. 193 

Here are lofty qualities acting in wise, yet simple 
and natural ways ; they may be summed up in fidel- 
ity to natural relations. Abraham's righteousness 
consisted in faith, but it was because this faith led 
him to practical justice, to strictest honor, to purest 
kindness and tenderest love, and because it upheld 
him in great undertakings, and in stern and solitary 
adherence to what he felt to be true. Here is no 
divorce of faith from works. By reason of his faith, 
he was in the midst of the best of works, but his 
righteousness is set down to his faith because it 
sprang out of faith. We must resolutely hold to 
this view, and reject that which presents Abraham 
as simply rewarded because he believes a difficult 
and improbable thing. The difficult and improbable 
may be the test of faith, but there can be no moral 
value in believing it. When Abraham — already 
an old man — believed that his seed should be as the 
stars of heaven, because God had so assured him, 
he showed the reality of his faith in God, but it was 
counted to him as righteousness because, being real, 
it yielded righteousness. Let us not stumble here. 
God does not reward and count you worthy because 
you believe some hard thing, or trust him in some 
dark hour ; but because you do so trust him you 
show that you have a moral quality and force that 
ensure righteousness. Faith is counted for right- 
eousness, because it reveals a real righteousness. 
But why is righteousness made to turn on faith in 
God if it consists in fulfilling worldly and human 
relations? Because in the final analysis all our main 
relations are to God. In him we live and move 



194 FAITH ESSENTIAL RIGHTEOUSNESS. 

and have our being. I have no real relation to this 
world ; the relation is transient, phenomenal ; I shall 
soon be out of this world, and am at no time wholly 
in it. Strictly speaking, I have no duties to the 
world by itself. The world did not make me, nor 
give me my powers ; it has no claim upon me, and 
I owe it no allegiance. My real relation is to God ; 
it may be through the world and human ties, but it 
is to God. Now, righteousness or character can be 
wrought out only in the fulfillment of a real relation, 
and if our only real relation is to God, there lies the 
field of character ; nor can it be gained in any other 
way. This is the reason why we insist so strenu- 
ously on faith in God, and why we suspect all char- 
acter and conduct, however fair, that are not con- 
sciously drawn from God. Men ask : Is it not 
enough if we act right and do good ? The answer 
is : You will not act right and do good unless you 
believe in God. You may secure some external, 
transient results that seem good, but you are work- 
ing in a fleeting and phantasmal world — not in the 
real and eternal world. There is no duty, no ser- 
vice, no reward, no righteousness, and no character 
except through faith in God. 

Abraham's history reached its culmination in that 
experience wrongly named the sacrifice of Isaac, for 
Isaac was not sacrificed ; rather should it be called 
the sacrifice of Abraham, since he was both the 
priest and the oblation. Of the narrative we will 
only stop to say that it matters little where the line 
of historical reality is drawn, though the greatness 
and accuracy of the truth it conveys would seem to 



FAITH ESSENTIAL RIGHTEOUSNESS. 195 

indicate that it sprang out of an actual experience 
and not from some dreaming brain. Truth is al- 
ways realized before it is thought out, experienced 
before it is conceived. In the divine mind concep- 
tion goes before action, but in man the order is re- 
versed: he acts and then formulates the principle 
of his action. Such is the law of a conditioned be- 
ing. God starts in the perfection of spiritual ex- 
istence, and from that point goes forth into action, 
— the universe springing from preexistent concep- 
tion. But man starts from the opposite pole, — a 
spark of intelligence under the weight of the whole 
world, — and thence works his way up to God by 
the path of trial. He knows no truth until he has 
achieved it by experience. Hence we may justly 
infer that these truths of faith and sacrifice, as 
found in the story of Abraham, sprang out of an 
actual experience. Before Prometheus lived in the 
brain of iEschylus, some man had stolen fire from 
heaven and paid the penalty ; and before he sang of 
Iphigenia, some father had offered his child to ap- 
pease angry gods. The conception of Abraham's 
sacrifice could not have existed except through act- 
ual occurrence, and the absoluteness of the truth 
confirms its historical origin. Some doctrine of 
sacrifice might be conjured up in the brain of some 
dreamer ; this has been done and much else of the 
sort in later ages ; but such a sacrifice as that of 
Abraham has in it a fineness and exactness of truth 
that come only from the human heart as it struggles 
under the burden of duty ; for men always act more 
truly than they speculate or imagine. 



196 FAITH ESSENTIAL RIGHTEOUSNESS. 

There is no better way of getting at the secret of 
this history than to regard it as an object-lesson in 
religion. God teaches in one way only, — by real- 
ity ; man learns in but one way, — by experience. 
And so, as humanity emerges from its unlighted and 
brutish past and enters upon a clear and rational 
history, there is taught in the person of this man 
the great lesson of faith, — how it works, what it 
requires, what it secures. A most striking and sig- 
nificant fact ! Trace history back to its first chapter 
and we find the same experience in religion that we 
are to-day striving to work out. Fix your eye upon 
the first historical man and you behold nim enacting 
the law of sacrifice in its highest form, and exercising 
faith in the fullest degree, — eternal lessons by which 
alone nations and men live ! 

I will now speak of these lessons more in detail. 

1. Full faith in God leads to Godlike action. 

The essential feature of the experience is that 
Abraham is led to feel that he must give up to God 
in the way of sacrifice the source of all his joy and 
hope. His son was a child of laughter ; in the be- 
getting and the conceiving of him the power and 
joy of youth were renewed ; all his vast hope as the 
founder of a nation turned on the life of his son. It 
was the intensity of his gratitude to Gnod that led to 
the idea of sacrifice. When a man believes in God 
as Abraham believed, — absolutely, with his whole 
nature ; and when he receives from God great gifts, 
and so comes under an overwhelming sense of grati- 
tude and obligation, — he feels moved and bound to 
give back to God these very gifts. Just because 



FAITH ESSENTIAL RIGHTEOUSNESS. 197 

they came as gifts, unexpectedly and out of due 
course and so sweeter, and because also they are in 
themselves rich and dear, he is impelled to give them 
back to God. Abraham in this matter acted in ac- 
cordance with the law of a fine and true nature ; for 
it is not according to human nature to stolidly accept 
gifts without sign or return. Human nature, when 
at its highest and noblest, rises towards an equality 
with God ; it would match the fullness of divine love 
by giving back to God in loving sacrifice the gift of 
love. So we all feel in our better moods. Abraham 
was acting in no strange way ; the logic of his con- 
duct was the same as that which governs all noble 
hearts. What God gives in love, loves gives back 
to him : this is the moral play between God and 
man by which the joy of God becomes the joy of 
man ; the moral equilibrium of the spiritual universe 
is so maintained. Abraham was but grandly and 
perfectly illustrating this principle. The method of 
carrying it out may have been mistaken, and so it 
was hindered in its execution, but the mistake does 
not impugn the truth of the principle and feeling 
under which he was acting. He has come in some 
waj 7 to a sense of the first and greatest of religious 
truths, — the sum of all religious truths, — faith in 
God ; but he has found no corresponding means of 
expressing it. His heart has outrun his intellect. 
He belongs to all ages in his faith, but to his own 
age in the expression of it. His spiritual sense is 
not commensurate with his condition. He has found 
God, but he has not found a way in which to worship 
him. His faith has no medium, no ritual, no Ian- 



198 FAITH ESSENTIAL RIGHTEOUSNESS. 

guage. Under such circumstances it is not strange 
that, driven by the vehemence of his faith towards 
expression of some sort, he should have fallen into 
ways that were common. The method or form did 
not much concern him. Some method and form he 
must have ; let it be what it may, so his faith can 
use it. The form may belong to the heathen about 
him : what of it ? Did he commit himself to their 
ideas by using their form ? We can imagine him in 
mental stress over the subject, — his heart demand- 
ing the sacrifice of the object he held dear, but his 
mind shrinking from an idolatrous custom, — a de- 
bate settled by the superior weight of his believing 
heart, which gave no quarter to his hesitating mind. 
The very excess and vehemence of his faith swept 
him over and past all self-criticism, as well as self- 
love. " Let me be as a heathen outwardly, if so it 
need be : I must in some way give back to God 
what he has given to me." And so God suffers him 
to move along on this line, — a true line spiritually 
and in the main, a false line practically. His feel- 
ing and purpose are counted as righteous ; his ritual 
is corrected and annulled. His mighty faith ushers 
in the eternal law of conduct ; his false expression of 
it undergoes a divine illumination. 

2. True sacrifice is to be of self, and of naught 
else. 

Keep in mind the fact that Abraham is being 
taught and grounded in religion ; that he is learning 
the lesson that righteousness is by faith ; that he is 
learning it through the one and only method of sac- 
rifice. He clearly apprehends the principle of sac- 



FAITH ESSENTIAL RIGHTEOUSNESS. 199 

rifice, but he blunders in the application of it. He 
falls into the common notion that the virtue of sacri- 
fice consists in the offering of some victim through 
which there is loss or suffering ; he thinks he cannot 
express his obligation and gratitude except by some 
pain inflicted on himself or another, — the old mis- 
take ! There is no gain in simple suffering, in giv- 
ing up and parting with what is good and sweet and 
beautiful : righteousness does not come about in that 
way ; it comes instead through that faith and trust 
in God which makes one capable of any sacrifice. 
What God was aiming at was not to end the life of 
Isaac, but to win the heart of the father. If he 
can induce Abraham to believe in him when there is 
every apparent reason for doubting him, — believe 
in God as against the world and against his own 
heart, and even against the external promise of God, 
— he has secured a state of mind that will yield all 
righteousness ; for as a man believes so he acts. If 
God can get Abraham over upon his side and up 
into his own life and truth ; if Abraham will die 
unto himself and to the world and its vain customs, 
and come out of his sacrifice a believing man, — the 
main result is achieved. He will have learned that 
true sacrifice requires no victim, but only the will of 
the offerer. 

Hence the history, which is not to be viewed ex- 
cept as a whole. God did tempt Abraham, and God 
did say, " Take thy son, thy only son whom thou 
lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah and 
offer him there for a burnt offering." Yes, but God 
did not say this apart from the whole transaction. 



200 FAITH ESSENTIAL RIGHTEOUSNESS 

Do not carp or confuse yourself with small criti- 
cisms. It is a divine teaching, and God was in it 
and all about it. The conclusion will bear out any 
of the steps. 

And so Abraham takes up his way to Moriah. 
For three days he pursues his journey, — time 
enough for change of purpose, for weakness or hes- 
itation to do its work, enough also to prove his 
strength and sincerity. God leads us to no hasty 
conclusions, forces us to no untimely decisions. 
When you serve God, know well what you are do- 
ing ; count the cost and weigh the motives. Three 
days! When the morning dawned, and his rested 
body fell into accord with the joy of nature, did he 
not say, " Life is sweet and life is enough : Isaac 
shall not die ! " And when the weary day closed, 
did not tne will flag with the flagging body, and all 
his purpose flow out into weakness, the tired will 
slain by untiring love? As he rested before his 
tent, and saw the stars march in endless procession 
across the sky, he recalled the word of God that so 
should his seed be ; there were the stars sure and 
steadfast, and here was his promised seed doomed 
to death : where and what is God's promise ? How, 
as the days passed, must the tormenting perplex- 
ity have increased ! How could he be the father of 
multitudes if Isaac should die? He must put the 
child to death, yet every promise of God to him, and 
every plan of God respecting him, turned on the life 
of the child. The son of promise becomes a child 
of doom ; the child born with laughter is to die as a 
burnt offering. How can his brain endure all this 



FAITH ESSENTIAL RIGHTEOUSNESS. 201 

fearful contradiction now hourly drawing nigh to its 
tragical conclusion ! Why does it not all slip away 
as a dream, a sickly jest, a distempered vision ? And 
why does he not take Isaac by the hand and turn 
back ? Doubtless it was the frequent temptation ; 
but faith also has its realities and its victories. 
It took his son away from him, but it left him God, 
and this, after all, is what he and all men must have. 
We can live without our child, but we cannot live 
without God. Even if there is no God, I cannot go 
one step without the thought of him. If God is a 
dream, I must still cherish the dream and live under 
it, for in that case all other things are but the shad- 
ows of dreams. But I believe in God because he is ; 
and because he is, I must trust him above and before 
all else : thus I come into his order and righteousness. 

So Abraham's mind worked, treading out the path 
with magnificent certainty, — mighty first steps in 
that path which each one of us must tread to reach 
eternal life. For the question before him was that 
set before us all : Shall we trust God, with the ap- 
parent loss of all things ; or shall we serve the 
world and lose God ? 

The vindication of faith that came to Abraham 
may come to us all. Let us not press in upon the 
process with intrusive question. Abraham is not 
required or permitted to do what he had conceived 
he must do ; still he has thus been led up into the 
very heights of faith and into the secret of sacrifice. 
It was not a mortal life that God wanted, but a hu- 
man will ; not an offering, but obedience ; not the 
smoke of an altar, but an ascending trust. Oh, what 



202 FAITH ESSENTIAL RIGHTEOUSNESS. 

a surprise was his when he found that all this wood 
and fire and altar, were but a formal play, and that 
the real process had been within himself ! He had 
trusted and followed God up to the last point of 
obedience, and, lo ! Isaac lives, while he himself has 
died forever to his old, misguided life ! Shall not 
this faith be counted as righteousness ? What shall 
the future life of such a man be but righteousness ? 
What else will he do hereafter but obey God ? 

This first, ancient lesson is still fresh and binding. 
God is teaching us all in the same way. Life is a 
perpetual giving up and laying down ; it is wrought 
into nature ; it is the way of Providence ; it is the 
command of Christ. We give up youth and strength 
and at last life ; we lose our gains, our children ; we 
must deny ourselves and take up Christ's cross, — 
forms of sacrifice, but only forms: they are not final. 
The thing required will be given back, and mean- 
while we ourselves have been carried over into God's 
world where all things belong. In the history of 
Abraham the whole circle of faith is complete. In 
his obedience he gave up Isaac, but Isaac lived, and 
Abraham henceforth walks as in heaven, for he 
knows God. But we lose our wealth, and go on 
in poverty ; we lose health and youth, and drop 
into weakness; we lose children, and never again 
behold their faces ; yet let us not despair. As we 
trust God, all these Isaacs of the heart will come 
back to us in God's great day; he takes nothing 
away from his children that he does not restore. 
He leads us not in false but yet in blind ways 
through bitter experiences, till at last our eyes are 



FAITH ESSENTIAL RIGHTEOUSNESS. 203 

opened and we learn with joy what God actually 
means. Our whole life is often such a trial, a 
weeping journey of loss and sacrifice, full of wonder 
and complaint. Why am I so poor ; why left so 
alone ? Why do I have this great burden of care ? 
Why is life passing into such disappointment? 
Why did God take my child ? Strange and sad is 
the journey till we learn to say, " The Lord will pro- 
vide," and to see that thus God is revealing himself 
to us ; that thus he is striving to give himself to us, 
and also to preserve for us whatever is good and 
true. We may be sure that we can never know 
God except by trusting him in experiences that 
seem to deny God. We cannot get over into that 
transcendent world of the spirit except as we die 
to this. And so God makes us die, — die in our 
worldly hopes, die in our affections, our ambitions, 
our passions, our bodies, — that believing in him we 
may so come to know him. 

In this way also we get at the real, inward worth 
of our blessings that seemed lost. The reward of 
Abraham's faith was that " in blessing I will bless 
thee" in a real and vital way. Isaac had been his 
own son ; now he is God's sacred gift. He under- 
stands by what tenure he owns and possesses ; he 
understands the law that binds him to the world 
and to God : no more human sacrifices for him ! 
Any stray sheep caught in a thicket will do for an 
oblation. What he must do hereafter is to obey 
and trust God, and that will be the righteousness to 
be rewarded ! Sacrifice is not an act of ecstatic 
gratitude, nor is it expiation or placation, but is the 



204 FAITH ESSENTIAL RIGHTEOUSNESS. 

obedience and trust of the heart. " Lo ! I come to 
do thy will, O God ! " 

We should need no better justification of this 
history than to look into Abraham's mind as he re- 
turned to his tent. It is not of Isaac that he now 
thinks, but of himself. God has been dealing with 
him, binding his own hesitating limbs upon the altar, 
piercing his own doubting heart with the knife of 
sacrifice, slaying all his blind, conflicting thoughts. 
Yes ! he himself has died and there is now a new 
man, one fit to be named the father of believers, and 
to head their endless procession. The secret of 
human order is his: he has learned that the man 
who trusts in God holds the key of his own destiny, 
and of human society as well. 

As he journeyed back, order was restored to 
nature, to his own life, to the future of his tribe, 
to his thoughts of God ; for there is no interpreter 
like a believing heart. The stars once more bespeak 
his progeny. The child of laughter is still the foun- 
tain of joy and hope. In such a revelation, doubt- 
less, his soul became prophetic, and he saw that he 
had set forth some greater act of sacrifice by which 
all nations were to be blessed. He felt that this 
crowning act of his life was in some way connected 
with this universal blessing. He certainly must 
have known that he had been dealing with eternal 
things ; that he had been led through the deep, 
spiritual necessities of man; and that what was so 
good to him must find at last some universal and 
consummate expression for all men ; and so he fore- 
saw the day and was glad. 



FAITH ESSENTIAL RIGHTEOUSNESS. 205 

The thread that connects Abraham's experience 
and Christ's sacrifice is subtle, but very real. Get at 
the heart and inmost meaning of each and they are 
alike. The secret of Christ's life, that so eludes all 
his biographers and still more eludes the dogmatists, 
was a faith in God in behalf of his nation and of 
humanity and of himself that still held firm while 
the nation, humanity, and himself passed under 
death, — counting that God was able to save, and 
would save, each in spite of death. This is exactly 
what Abraham did. He had hopes for himself, for 
his tribe, and for all nations, that turned upon the 
life of his son. These hopes pass through the ordeal 
of sacrifice, and so come to real and spiritual fulfill- 
ment. Christ passes himself, the nation, humanity, 
through the sacrifice of obedience, and recovers his 
own life, saves the nations, and redeems humanity. 
In the obeying Christ, the trusting and dying Christ, 
the risen and glorified Christ, all the nations of the 
earth are blessed. Oh that we all may learn this 
eternal process and secret of salvation ! Believe in 
God ; trust God by obedience to the uttermost ; 
trust him for a way when there is no way, for light 
when there is no light, for all things when you have 
nothing, for joy when there is only sorrow, for life 
when you are in the midst of death : thus you will 
find at last that faith is not only righteousness, but 
life and joy and peace. 



EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 



"The agency of God in creation can never be negatived or ob- 
scured, but only more clearly revealed, by the unveiling of the pro- 
cesses by which he works. 

" Theists, of all others, ought to anticipate the discovery of order 
and solidarity where there has seemed to be separateness and con- 
fusion. 

' ' From the time man became a moral being he was launched 
upon a sea of conflict. The higher realms of his new nature were 
not to be entered upon at once. He might not eat of the tree of 
life, and come as by a leap to the goal. The way to it is the way 
of warfare. Henceforth the law of his being is not simply a becom- 
ing: it is an overcoming." — F. H. Johnson, Andover Eev., 1884, 
p. 363. 

' ' I am quite sure that the most fundamental factors of evolution 
are still unknown ; that there are more and yet greater factors than 
are yet dreamed of in our philosophy. But evolution of some kind 
and according to some law which we yet imperfectly understand, 
— evolution affecting alike every realm of nature, a universal law 
of evolution, — is, I believe, a fact which is rapidly approaching 
recognition." — Prof. Le Conte. 

"No theory of evolution clashes with the fundamental ideas of 
the Bible, so long as it is not denied that there is a human species, 
and that man is distinguished from the lower animals by attributes 
which we know that he possesses. Whether the first of human 
kind were created outright, or, as the second narrative in Genesis 
represents it, were formed out of inorganic material, out of the dust 
of the ground, or were generated by inferior organized beings, 
through a metamorphosis of germs, or some other process, — these 
questions, as they are indifferent to theism, so they are indifferent 
as regards the substance of biblical teaching." — Prof. George P. 
Fisher, D. D. , LL. D. , The Grounds of Theistic and Christian Be- 
lief, p. 478. 



EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 



For every house is builded by some one ; but he that built all 
things is God. — Hebrews iii. 4. 

The fears that were felt when the doctrine of evo- 
lution was first offered to the world were not unnat- 
ural, nor derogatory to the dignity of earnest minds. 
When a new and revolutionary doctrine involving the 
nature, the action, and the destiny of humanity is 
proposed, there is an intuitive wisdom or instinct of 
self-preservation in man that prompts him to turn on 
it with resentment and denial. Truth is man's chief 
heritage ; it is his life, and is to be guarded as his 
life. If lost, he knows that it cannot easily be re- 
gained. It is like the golden image of Yishnu that 
the Hindu was taking to his home from the sacred 
city : if once laid upon the ground, it could not be 
taken up again. The keeping of truth is not in- 
trusted merely to our reason, but to our whole na- 
ture ; every faculty and sentiment, down even to fear 
and pride, may properly be used in the defense of it. 

Reason may at last decide what is truth, but not 
until it has won the consent of the whole man. The 
period between the exchange of theories is one in 
which human nature does not appear in its nobler 



210 EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 

guise, but a profound analysis shows that it is acting 
with subtle, unconscious wisdom. It is better also 
in the end that a doctrine which is to become truth 
should run the gauntlet of general denial and oppo- 
sition. By far the greater part of what is proposed 
as true in every department turns out to be false. 
Theories more in number than the wasted blossoms 
of the May fall fruitless to the ground. If human 
nature as a whole did not turn on the conceits and 
dreams that are offered to it, truth itself would have 
no chance ; it could not extricate itself from the rub- 
bish of folly that over-tolerance has suffered to accu- 
mulate. Truth becomes truth by its own achieve- 
ment ; it must conquer human nature before it can 
rule it, — win it before it can be loved of it. This 
wise, spontaneous treatment of new theories delays 
their acceptance even when proved true, but always 
with advantage to the truth ; for however fair the 
final form is to be, it comes unshaped and with en- 
tanglements, and often, like some animals, it is born 
blind. Its first need is criticism, and even criticism 
based on denial rather than on inquiry ; only it must 
be criticism, and not blank contradiction. 

The advent of the doctrine of evolution is an 
illustration of these wise and wholesome processes. 
When it was first proposed in scientific form, it was 
tossed aside in scorn, as too crude and naked for 
presentation in the world of thought. Its revival 
within the latter half of the century provoked a sim- 
ilar storm of disdain and denial ; but it kept its feet, 
bore its opposition bravely, and now may be said to 
have won a position, — but by no means in the same 



EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 211 

form in which it first appeared. The evolution that 
is now gaining general acceptance is very different 
from the evolution propounded twenty years ago. 
Then it claimed the universe, which it proposed to 
fill to the exclusion of philosophy and religion. But 
to-day its place and limits are defined by philosophy, 
and instead of having the universe as its exclusive 
domain it has only a section of it, which it holds as 
the gift, and as still under the supremacy of philos- 
ophy. Having at last become presentable to the 
world of thought and grown shapely and yielded to 
limitations, it is winning the suffrage of the world 
and assuming its place in the hierarchy of truth that 
ministers to humanity. Definition and distinction 
will be made farther on, but some theory properly 
known as evolution may now be considered as estab- 
lished, and as already entering into the practical 
thought of the world. 

It may be said that evolution is not yet proved ; 
that it will be soon enough to adjust our faith to it 
when it has ceased to be a hypothesis and become a 
full-established theory. The line between hypoth- 
esis and theory is seldom defined ; it is not a line, 
but a region. There is much in the doctrine of evo- 
lution that is still hypothetical, as there is still in 
astronomy. But we have sailed far enough in this 
voyage of search after the creative method to war- 
rant the belief that we draw nigh to the land of our 
quest. The seaweed of the shore drifts by on the 
tide, the odors of spicy groves float on the wind, the 
birds come and go as from a near home, the dim 
outline in the horizon is changing from cloud to solid 



212 EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 

land. The quest is practically ended, and now that 
we are so near as to catch the ominous thunder of 
the surf, it is wiser to look out for harbor and an- 
chorage than run the risk of breakers ; for evolu- 
tion, like the coast of all knowledge, is lined by de- 
structive rocks, and also by inlets that run within 
where safe possession may be taken. 

In accepting evolution, it is well to remember that 
we make no greater change than has several times 
been made in all the leading departments of human 
knowledge. In sociology the despotic idea yielded 
to the monarchical idea, which in turn is now yield- 
ing to the democratic idea. In philosophy the de- 
ductive method has yielded to the inductive. In re- 
ligion the priestly idea is yielding to the ministerial. 
So, in accepting evolution as the general method of 
creation in place of that which has prevailed, we 
only repeat the history of the exchange of the Ptol- 
emaic system for the Copernican, and of those new 
theories of astronomy and geology which forced us 
to redate the age of the world and of man's life upon 
it. The wrench to faith and the apparent violation 
of experience are different, but no more violent than 
were those of the past. The present incompleteness 
of evolution has its analogy in the Copernican sys- 
tem, which waited long for the additions of Kepler 
and Newton ; and geology is still an unfinished story. 
Nor are we justified in withholding our assent to 
evolution because we cannot each one for ourselves 
verify its proofs. The vast majority of men could 
not now verify the Copernican system ; it has not 
even won recognition in human speech : the sun 



EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 213 

" rises " and " sets," and will so be spoken of while 
men watch its apparent motion. Evolution is an in- 
duction from many sciences, — chemistry, astronomy, 
mathematics, geology, botany, biology, — and it is 
impossible that any but the special student should 
critically make the induction. But the Copernican 
system was an induction from mathematics, and 
even from those higher forms of it that ordinary 
men never have traced. Its acceptance was, and 
is still, an act of faith. Belief in evolution should 
be easier because it is confirmed by several sciences 
working on independent lines. It is not the biol- 
ogist alone who proposes evolution, but the astron- 
omer, the chemist, the geologist, the botanist, and 
the sociologist. I cannot examine and test their 
processes, but I can trust their conclusions. I do 
not, however, thus make myself the slave of their 
opinions, for these opinions run off into other fields 
where I may be as good a judge as they. I may rep- 
resent a science as real as theirs, and possibly larger 
and more authoritative. Hence, in accepting evo- 
lution as a probably true history or theory of the 
method of creation, we do not necessarily yield to 
all the assumptions and inferences that are often 
associated with it. It is not above criticism. Like 
the germ-seeds of which science treats, each one of 
which threatens to possess the whole earth, and 
would do so if not checked by other growths, so evo- 
lution — shall we say through affinity with its chief 
theme ? — threatens to take possession of the uni- 
verse. But its myriad thistledown, blown far and 
wide by every breeze, meets at last the groves of oak 



214 EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 

and pine that limit and define its spread. All about 
these various sciences stands the greater science — - 
philosophy — under which they are included, from 
which they draw their life, and to which they must 
bow. Evolution is to be feared not in its bare doc- 
trine of development, but in the scope and relations 
assigned to it. If it be regarded as universal in- 
stead of general, as inclusive of all things instead 
of a part of all things, it is fatal to morals and re- 
ligion. If it be regarded as supreme, it gives its 
own law of necessity to all else. But if it is sub- 
ordinate to philosophy, if it is considered as un- 
der thought-relations, if it is held as finite and rel- 
ative, it carries no danger to morals or religion or 
faith. It may possibly modify but it cannot over- 
throw them, simply because they stand in a larger 
order. 

But evolution is not to be accepted in a simply 
negative way, — because it can no longer be resisted. 
We are under no obligation to accept any truth 
until it is serviceable. . It is possible to conceive of 
truths that would be of no value to men, — such as 
the constitution of other orders of beings ; if made 
known, it might be passed by. But evolution, 
properly regarded, is becoming tributary to society, 
and seems destined to clarify its knowledge, to en- 
large and deepen its convictions, to set it upon true 
lines of action, and to minister to the Christian 
faith. 

Amongst the important services it has begun to 
render is that it is removing a certain empirical 
thread that has been interwoven with previous 



EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 215 

theories of creation. The unity of creation has 
never been seriously denied except by extreme 
thinkers of the dualistic school. But the principle 
of unity has not been recognized until of late. The 
bond or ground of unity was justly found in God, 
but that conception merely asserted that because 
God is one there is unity in all created things. This 
may be faith, but it is not philosophy. May not 
faith become also philosophy ? Unity exists not only 
because one God created all things, but because he 
works by one process, or according to one principle. 
As knowledge broadens and wider generalizations are 
made, we find a certain likeness of process in all 
realms that indicates one law or method; namely, 
that of development or evolution. One thing comes 
from another, assumes a higher and finer form, and 
presses steadily on towards still finer and higher 
forms. We find the same method in matter, in 
brute life, in humanity, in social institutions, in gov- 
ernment, in religions, in the progress of Christianity. 
Let not this thought disturb us. Do we not see that 
otherwise the universe could have no unity ? If 
God worked on one principle in the material realm, 
on another in the vital, on another in the social, gov- 
ernmental, and moral realm, there would not be a 
proper universe. These realms might indeed be reg- 
ulated and kept from conflict, but they would break 
up the universe into parts separated by chasms, ren- 
der knowledge difficult, vain, and disjointed, and 
create a certain antagonism opposite to the nature o$/ 
mind. Man would be correlated, not to a universe, 
but to separate systems and orders, and these varied 



216 EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 

correlations would have no underlying unity. It 
would be difficult to prove the unity of God as 
against a harmonious polytheism or sovereign Jove. 
We might believe in one God, but we could not 
prove our faith. If matter has one principle in its 
process, and life another, and morals another, why 
not as many gods ? It has not been easy to keep 
dualism out of philosophy. But, with one principle 
or method in all realms, we have a key that turns all 
the wards of the universe, opens all its doors in the 
past, and will open all in time to come. Knowledge 
becomes possible and harmonious ; a path opens 
everywhere ; the emphasis of the whole universe is 
thus laid on the unity of God. And when we find 
not only one method or principle, but the direction 
of its action, we obtain a prophecy and assurance of 
the final result of creation that falls in with the 
highest hopes of Christianity ; for the process tends 
steadily towards the moral. The Church has hoped 
and striven for a righteousness that shall fill the 
earth. It may need only its faith to animate and 
guide it, but it is not amiss to lay its ear upon the 
earth and hear, if it can, the same word. It is not 
amiss to see men in prehistoric ages forsaking caves 
and living in huts, using first a club and then a bow, 
ores and then metals, nomadic and then in villages. 
It is not unhelpful to the hope of mankind to see 
despotism yielding to a class, and the class yielding 
to the people ; personal revenge passing into social 
punishment of crime by law, and justice slowly creep- 
ing to higher forms ; penalty first as vindictive, then 
retributive, and now at last reformatory ; first a con- 



EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 217 

ception of God as power, then as justice, and finally 
as love. These evolutionary processes may be woven 
into the cord by which the Church binds itself to its 
mighty purpose. It thus secures a broader base for 
the generalization of its working truths ; for the 
pyramid will not pierce heaven unless it rests upon 
the whole earth. No truth is perfect that is cut off 
from other truths. 

Evolution not only perfects our conception of the 
unity of God, but it strengthens the argument from 
design by which his goodness is proved. This argu- 
ment may be based on the course of civilization, or 
on the structure of the eye, or on the working of 
love. Paley's argument, as Bishop Temple has well 
shown, stands, with slight modifications, on as strong 
a basis as ever. But if we can look at the universe 
both as a whole and in all its processes and in all 
ages, and find one principle working everywhere, 
binding together all things, linking one process to 
another with increasing purpose, and steadily press- 
ing towards a full revelation of God's goodness, we 
find the argument strengthened by as much as we 
have enlarged the field of its illustration. But if 
one part of the universe is abruptly shut off from 
another, if no stronger bond of unity be assigned to 
it than that of creative energy, and only the near- 
lying fields of design are used, then the argument is 
abridged and may even fall short of an absolute con- 
clusion. 

It is felt by some, especially on the first contact 
with evolution, that it puts God at a distance and 
hides him behind the laws and processes of nature. 



218 EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 

The apprehension is worthy, for we need and crave a 
near God, and may well dispute any theory that puts 
him at a distance or fences him off by impenetrable 
walls. The universal and unappeasable cravings of 
the heart may always be opposed to what seem to 
be tbe laws of nature ; for there is a science of the 
spirit that is as imperative and final in its word as 
the observed processes of nature. But evolution, 
properly considered, not only does not put God at a 
distance, nor obscure his form behind the order of 
nature, but draws him nearer, and even goes far 
towards breaking down the walls of mystery that 
shut him out from human vision. In other words, 
in evolution we see a revelation of God, while in 
previous theories of creation we had only an asser- 
tion of God. In evolution we have the first cause 
working by connected processes in an orderly way ; 
in former theories we had a first cause creating the 
universe by one omnipotent fiat, ordaining its laws, 
and then leaving it to its courses or merely uphold- 
ing it by his power. In respect of nearness, we at 
once see that evolution brings God nearer than do 
the other theories. Their hold upon the mind is not 
at this point, but at another mistaken for it. The 
religious mind delights in mystery ; it is an uncon- 
scious assertion by the highest faculties of our 
nature that we transcend the knowable, — that we 
belong to, and live and have our destiny in, the 
infinite. Hence we shrink from theories that seem 
to undertake to explain God and his working, and 
repeat with complacence the ancient phrase, " It is 
impossible; therefore I believe." It gratifies our 



EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 219 

reverence to abuse our reason. There is in all this 
a thread of truth, but the fine thread of reverence is 
not cut nor drawn out of the web of faith by trans- 
ferring the mystery of creation, from a point of time 
and space beyond creation, and putting it contin- 
uously into the processes of creation. Mystery 
enough there is and always will be, and God's ways 
will never become so familiar and plain that they 
shall " fade into the light of common day." In- 
stead, this drawing God down and into the processes 
of creation as a constant and all- pervasive factor, 
deepens the sense of mystery and awe when we 
have turned our eyes in that direction. The poet 
plucks a flower out of the crannied wall, holds it in 
his hand, and says : — 

" Little flower — but if I could understand 
What you are, root and all, and all in all, 
I should know what God and man is." 

In these simple lines we have an expression of the 
true ground of that form of reverence which is bred 
by mystery. It is not wonder at primal creation that 
moves the poet, but the creating power lodged and at 
work in every roadside flower. Goethe put the same 
thought into statelier lines : — 

" No ! Such a God my worship may not win 
Who lets the world about his finger spin 
A thing extern : my God must rule within, 
And whom I own for Father, God, Creator, 
Hold nature in himself, himself in nature ; 
And in his kindly arms embraced, the whole 
Doth live and move by his pervading soul." 

Milton built his great epic of creation upon an orig- 
inal creative fiat, but his conception is like his cos- 



220 EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 

mology, traditional and unshaped by poetic insight. 
The greatest poet in these later centuries, he still 
lacked the highest of poetic qualities, — sympathetic 
insight into nature. Tennyson, in his one line, 

" Closer is lie than breathing', and nearer than hands and feet," 

betrays a truer sense of God in creation than is to be 
found in " Paradise Lost." 

It is true that a change in our conception of crea- 
tion requires a readjustment of our feelings of rev- 
erence ; and in the transition there may be danger 
of losing it altogether. It is always easier to change 
our beliefs than our feelings, and the mind more 
readily accommodates itself to necessary changes 
than do the sensibilities. But, whatever the danger 
and cost, such changes must be made, and in the end 
there is gain. The eyes are dazzled when a new win- 
dow lets in more sunshine, and light does the work 
of darkness, but soon all things are seen more clearly. 
It cannot be said that, as yet, the conception of cre- 
ation by evolution touches the mind so deeply and 
reverently as the former conception. We are still 
occupied by the details and by the wonder of the 
truth, and have not connected it with its relations, 
nor learned to think and feel under it. When a 
meteor falls to earth, men at first take more heed of 
its shape and composition than of its origin. It will 
be found that as we live on under the great truth 
and discern increasingly its wisdom and harmony, the 
old sense of reverence will come back to us and be- 
come a finer, deeper, intenser feeling than it was 
under the old conception of creation. It will also be 



EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 221 

a more intelligent and better-proportioned reverence. 
It may be questioned if the reverence excited by the 
bare fact of creation has any great value. That God 
created the universe is a truth of supreme impor- 
tance in philosophy and religion, but a valuable rev- 
erence is to be drawn from the later phases and out- 
come of creation rather than from its beginning and 
its earlier stages. The first active law in creation of 
which we know is that of gravitation, but no moral 
feeling is awakened by the fact that matter attracts 
inversely to the square of distance. The condition 
of the world, as it first took spherical shape, could 
only be regarded with horror, and animal life in the 
paleozoic ages repels us by its amorphous shapes ; 
nor is it pleasant to picture our not very remote an- 
cestors. Reverence is not to be stirred by that part 
of creation which is behind us, but by creation as a 
whole, and by its end. It is only under a theory of 
evolutionary creation that we can truly wonder and 
adore God. Otherwise, how shall we think, how feel, 
before the Power that created those long orders of 
beings that simply ravened and devoured one another? 
If those orders were created independently, if they 
are not necessary links of a whole united in an evo- 
lutionary process, their creation cannot be rationally 
reconciled with any worthy conception of God. But 
seen as transient forms in an ever-growing process, 
thrust aside and buried under Devonian strata, and 
yielding to more shapely and complex orders, and so 
climbing by an ever-finer transition to some final and 
perfect end, we not only can tolerate them in thought, 
but adore the directing Power and delight in his 



222 EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 

method. But the feeling of reverence only possesses 
us as we discern the creative process issuing in man 
as a moral being. Were creation cut short at man 
as a physical being, there would be nothing in it to 
command our reverence, as there would be nothing 
to satisfy our reason. 

Nor should it disturb us to find that our moral 
qualities have their first intimations in the brute 
world ; that we find in the higher animals hints, fore- 
castings of moral faculty and actions ; that as our 
bodies bear some organic relation to the brutes, so 
also may our minds. Body is not mind, but they are 
organically related ; sensation is not consciousness, 
but the latter is conditional on the former. So man 
is not a brute, but he is organically related to the 
brute, and the relation may touch his whole nature. 
Our feeling on this point should be determined, not 
by the first look, but by its final bearing. If it in- 
validated our moral faculties, or robbed them of their 
dignity, or made them less imperative, or separated 
them in any degree from God, we should be justified 
in rejecting the theory on the simple ground that 
these faculties constitute a science in themselves, as 
commanding and real as physical science. To disown 
mind before matter is stultification. But there is no 
such alternative. A relation of the moral faculties 
to brute qualities may exist without impairing the 
divineness of conscience and reverence and love. 
But whatever our feeling, we cannot ignore the fact 
that in the brute world there are intimations or sem- 
blances of moral faculties ; nor need we hesitate to 
say that they are united by the secret cord of the 



EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 223 

creative energy. The man of science, observing the 
development, says that it is brought about by natural 
forces ; the philosopher may grant it, but adds that 
it is brought about by an intelligent force working 
freely and progressively, and therefore possibly by 
increments. Moral qualities are not found in the 
brutes, but there are the grounds of them — the 
stuff, so to speak, out of which they are constituted, 
though not the essence that gives them their parti- 
cular nature. Their presence there is only an indi- 
cation that the moral is in the mind and purpose of 
God, even so far back as in the brute world — a 
foregleam of the approaching issue. They show the 
divine purpose to crowd in the moral as soon and as 
fast as possible, prophesying it long before it can ap- 
pear, impatient, as it were, with the dull processes 
behind, and pressing on with yearning speed towards 
his moral image. We have spoken altogether too 
long of the brutes with contempt — as though they 
had nothing of God in them, and were wholly alien 
to ourselves. It is no degradation of human love 
that it is organically linked with the brooding care 
of a brute for her young, nor of self-sacrifice that it 
is so related to a lioness dying for her whelps, nor of 
fidelity that it is akin to that of a dog dying for his 
master. They are not identical, but they are related : 
they spring from one root, but they reach forth to 
different issues ; they have one motive in common, 
but in man they have also other motives and other 
relations. The rudimentary forms of moral quali- 
ties in the brute world simply show that the moral 
element and purpose is present in the entire creative 



224 EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 

process. For it was not power that brooded over 
the elements at the beginning, but love ; and the laws 
of nature are not the cold formulas of mathematics, 
but are laws of righteousness and truth. In the 
most absolute sense these laws are holy, and when 
they begin to work in the higher brutes they must 
by their very nature assume a moral aspect or sem- 
blance ; it cannot be kept out. Life, in its more 
complex forms, is so dependent upon the moral, or 
what is practically moral, that it cannot be main- 
tained without it. There could be no gregariousness 
in the animal world without the action of principles 
that are essential to morality. It is no impeachment 
of the dignity or value or imperativeness of a moral 
faculty that it has come about by growth and differ- 
entiation. Indeed, it may stand all the firmer if its 
root reaches through all grades of life, and strikes 
down to the centre of the earth. If I can trace my 
moral qualities throughout the universe, I certainly 
will not respect them less than if I found them only 
in some corner of it. We are on false lines of thought 
when we try to divide creation ; more and more does 
it appear to be an invisible thing bound together by 
some mysterious, internal bond of unity. 

It does not follow that because a moral faculty 
is brought to full appearance by a combination of 
qualities or feelings, it has its origin or its essential 
potentiality in those qualities and feelings, or that 
it contains no more than is found in them. A com- 
bination of two things that produces an effect which 
neither could produce alone, implies more than is to 
be found in the two things : there is the idea or the 



EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 225 

proportion of the combination upon which the effect 
depends; and this must come from some mind that 
ordained the proportion, and not from the things 
themselves. An acid and a base when mingled 
precipitate a salt, but they are not the authors of 
the salt ; the law of the relation between the acid 
and the base is the author. The whole process 
may be set down in mathematical terms, but all 
the more is it evident that the product originates 
in the mathematical thought underlying it. 

The same may be true of the moral faculties; 
they may appear as the results of brute qualities 
through long growth and differentiation, but they 
are not on that account to be regarded as the prod- 
uct of brute qualities, but of the law under which 
they have come about. So far from moral faculties 
originating in brute qualities, though their history 
may lie in them, they do not become moral except 
as they cease to be brute qualities. A flower is a 
flower only by refusing to be a leaf, though it 
comes about by differentiation from a leaf. So 
conscience or reverence may have come about by 
evolution through brute qualities, but they become 
themselves only by ceasing to be what they were. 
They get their real and essential nature from the 
mind that is behind and within the whole process. 

If the conclusion disturbs us, if we shrink from 
linking our nobler faculties with preceding orders, 
it is because we have as yet no proper conception 
of the close and interior relation of God to all his 
works ; nor do we stop to see that our attempts to 
separate ourselves from the previous creation are 



226 EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 

reflections upon God's handiwork. Much of the 
talk upon the theme has a Pharisaic taint. Let us 
be thankful for existence, however it came about, 
and let us not deem ourselves too good to be included 
in the one creation of the one God. 

The fact that man may be organically related to 
the material and brute world does not in itself de- 
termine either his nature or his destiny. So long 
as he is what he is, it does not matter what his his- 
tory has been, though it may be a matter of conse- 
quence how — by what agency — he is differentiated 
from the brute. But the bare fact of his develop- 
ment from lower nature is not itself a fact that 
determines anything. It is a hasty and imperfect 
logic that conjures dark visions out of the relation, 
and reasons that if man is developed from the brutes 
he will share their fate. Origin has nothing to do 
with destiny; we can measure one as little as the 
other, and we know too little of either to use them 
as terms of close argument. I may be bound to 
physical and brute nature by the cord of origin, but 
that cord does not bind my destiny. A bird might 
be tied to the earth by a thread of infinite length 
and the knot never be unloosed, yet it might fly for- 
ever into the heavens and away from its source. It 
is an unreasonable contempt of lower nature that 
makes us fear it. As we find God in destiny, so we 
may find him in origin, — present at both ends of 
his own process and in equal power. Indeed, our 
chances destiny-wise may be all the better because 
we are thoroughly interwoven with the whole crea- 
tion. It is possible that we must be organically 



EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 227 

connected with the previous creation in order to 
share in the eternal order before us ; that only thus 
can we be included in the circle of endless existence. 
If man is a sporadic and unrelated creation, his des- 
tiny hangs upon the arbitrary will that so created 
him, and gets no promise or assurance from the 
great order of the universe and its Creator. 

Nor need we be disturbed by the claim of an or- 
ganic relation between the various orders of exist- 
ence, lest no place be found for the truths and doc- 
trines of religion. This has been the chief ground 
of alarm in the past. This firm linking of creation 
into one, this eduction of one phase from another 
by a natural process, seems to many to shut off the 
possibility of a revelation, of miracle, of an incar- 
nation, of moral action, of immortality. It seems 
easier to defend these truths when a creative chasm, 
so to speak, has been placed between man and the 
rest of creation ; man is more easily handled as a 
moral and spiritual being when he is treated as an 
independent creation. It has been feared that if 
such a chasm were not insisted on, man as a moral 
being would fall under the laws of the previous cre- 
ation, and be swamped in necessity, and swallowed 
up in the general destruction of the previous orders ; 
that so unique a fact as the incarnation could have 
no justification ; that miracle could not be defended 
in the presence of hitherto universal law; that 
moral action could not be discriminated from the in- 
stinctive action of the brutes, whose action in turn 
could not be discriminated from the chemic and 
dynamic action of matter, thus throwing the chain 



228 EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 

of materialism about mind and spirit. I grant that 
these fears would be well grounded if certain theo- 
ries of evolution were to be accepted as settled — 
such as the theory that matter has within itself the 
potentiality of all terrestial life, and goes on in its 
development alone and by its own energy ; a the- 
ory that may stand for the various mechanical and 
atomic doctrines that deify force and dispense with 
cause. But this theory has a steadily lessening 
place in the world of thought, for the simple reason 
that it is a theory that renders thought impossible. 

These fears would also be well grounded if the 
theory were established that what is called force or 
the forces were invariable — never more nor less; 
that they worked only b}^ transmutation and within 
the original limits ; that force itself is an entity. 
This theory also has no tenable place in philosophy. 
What is called force is the method of the action of 
a cause, and is not a self-acting entity. Force can 
proceed only from a will. It is absurd to say of 
any inanimate thing that it is a force ; it may trans- 
mit force, but only as it has first received it. Force 
cannot be conceived except as proceeding from a 
will ; nor can it be observed except as acting under 
a thought-relation — that is, intelligently towards an 
end by design. Nor is it the invariable and eternal 
thing it is claimed to be. Matter existed — logically 
if not otherwise — before force, and must therefore 
have received its force from some source or reser- 
voir; and as it works in thought-relations it must 
have come from an intelligent source that cherishes 
a design. The claim that force is invariable because 



EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 229 

it is so observed is fallacious, simply because obser- 
vation is limited. In the morning we see the sun 
go up, and till noon we might say that it will go up 
forever, but night reverses our observation. It 
would have been necessary to be present when the 
foundations of the earth were laid, to be able to say 
that as the chemic and dynamic passed into the or- 
ganic there was not an addition of a force. Indeed, 
when the origin of force is considered, we need not 
think of it as forever exactly so much and no more, 
but only as the steady pressure of the Eternal hand 
upon matter, working uniformly indeed because there 
is an affinity between force and steadiness, and a 
divine wisdom in uniformity ; but we are under no 
compulsion either of reason or of observation to 
assert that this force is without variation. Force 
begins — where we know not till we postulate God ; 
and it ends — how and where it goes we know not. 
That it is without play, that it may not be rhyth- 
mic and so analogous to the divinest of arts, that it 
is worked by necessity and not by freedom, is an as- 
sumption that is contradicted by every conscious act 
of the human will. A system that works by law or 
apparent necessity towards will or freedom as an 
end, must be grounded in freedom. In the early 
orders of creation, the divine hand held steadily 
and evenly the lever of the great engine as it ran 
along the grooves of changing matter ; but when a 
brute, seeing an enemy in one path, chooses another, 
there is a hint at least of self-generated force. And 
it is idle to say that the changes wrought by man 
on the face of the earth are not the products of his 



230 EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 

creative will. These phantoms of necessity, of ma- 
terialized virtues, of instinctive morality, need no 
longer disturb us ; they are vanishing before the 
growing light of reason. It is not the better way 
to assail them with indignant denial ; our fierce 
weapons cleave them through, but they stand, like 
Miltonic devils, as before. Nor can we exorcise 
them by the magic of faith ; they thus cease to 
frighten us, but they are not dispelled. The light 
only will drive them to their caves, and the light is 
growing. 

When evolution is regarded, not as a self -working 
engine, — an inexorable and unsupervised system, 
a mysterious section of creation assumed to be the 
whole, — but rather as a process whose laws are the 
methods of God's action, and whose force is the 
steady play of Eternal will throughout matter, there 
need be no fear lest man and religion be swallowed 
up in matter and brute life. In other words, man is 
not correlated to the process of creation, but to the 
Creator. Man may bear a certain relation to the 
process, but his real and absolute relation is to 
the power over and in the process. We may have 
come to be what we are through a process of devel- 
opment ; much of it may linger on in us ; some of its 
laws still play within us : we eat and procreate as do 
the brutes ; chemical action builds up and takes down 
our bodies ; analogies of its processes reappear in us : 
evil to be put away, good to be perfected. But we 
are cut off: from our previous history quite as much 
as we are bound to it, because, the whole process 
being one of design and man being its fulfillment, 



EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 231 

he drops away from it as the apple drops from the 
tree. The fruit when it is ripe is no longer related 
to the branch but to its use ; it no longer belongs to 
the tree but to him who planted the tree, and he will 
use it as seems to him fit. It may be set down as an 
axiom that the end of a process cannot be identified 
with the process. Man is the final and perfect fruit 
of creation, and belongs to whatever has the best 
claim upon him — to morals, if he is found chiefly 
to belong there. However he came about, out of 
whatever depths of seeming necessity he has been 
drawn, he has freedom, consciousness, moral sense, 
personality. He can obey and disobey, love and 
hate, do right and wrong. These powers may en- 
gender a history that requires all that religion 
demands — even to a doctrine of the fall, if any 
care to insist upon it. The phrase, now so prevalent, 
" a fall upward," indicates confusion of thought. 
The fall was not upward, but it was a step upward 
in the scale of being. It was not till after it that 
the Lord God said : Behold, the man is become as 
one of us, to know good and evil. 1 There is no sci- 
entific reason to be ascribed against the theory that 
when a free agent finds himself crowned with moral 
sovereignty, — it matters not how, — he trifles with 
it, puts his crown under his brutish feet and not on 
his godlike brow. His past may follow him as a 
temptation, a deceiving serpent ; his future may 
stand before him as duty upborne by a hope ; he 
may at first drop back towards his past and not 
hold himself steady to duty. As in creation the 

1 Rev. F. H. Johnson, Andover Review, April, 1884, p. 379. 



232 EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 

chemic needed more of God in order to become 
organic, and as the organic needed more of God 
than could be found in the chemic in order to be- 
come vital and conscious, so man may need God in 
all his fullness and in the perfection of his mani- 
festation in order to become perfectly man. Hence 
a revelation ; hence the incarnation. If the whole 
progressive creation is a progressive revelation of 
God, when its process culminates and ends in man, 
it is the very thing we might expect ; namely, that 
there should be a full and perfect manifestation of 
God in the form and with the powers needed to lift 
humanity up to the level of its destiny. The very 
thing to be expected, after man has been drawn out 
of the processes of matter and brought to the verge 
of the moral and spiritual world, is that he should 
be provided with a moral and spiritual environment 
for feeding and protecting his moral nature. How- 
ever else Christianity may be defined, it is the moral 
environment of humanity — the bread of its life. 
Without it the fulfillment and completion of man's 
destiny as a spiritual being could not be secured. 
He may have all spiritual faculty within him, but 
he lacks environment : the spiritual world must be 
opened to him, it must infold him ; and this is done 
in a real way and by an actual process in the 
Christian facts. 

If it should appear that these facts and the theory 
of evolution were incompatible, and the question 
were raised which must be given up, the answer 
would be — hold on to the moral and spiritual claim, 
and let the scientific theory go ; for the simple 



EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 233 

reason that the moral facts involved in Christianity 
are more stable and trustworthy than those of phys- 
ical science. The unknowable thing is matter. It 
is often said that theories of religion cannot stand 
up against ascertained knowledge. Doubtless, for 
nothing can stand up against the truth. But the 
real question is, what is ascertained knowledge ? 
There is a solidity, a certainty, in moral truth that 
cannot be claimed for the verdicts of physical sci- 
ence, because moral truth is the direct assertion of 
personal identity, which is the only thing that we 
absolutely know ; but matter — who can tell us what 
it is, or trace our relation to it beyond uniformity 
of impression ? Morals are absolute ; man knows 
them because he knows himself, and he can know 
nothing opposed to them ; but physical science is the 
merest kaleidoscope — turn the tube and you see a 
new picture. The surest and most universal law in 
the material world is that of gravitation, but it is 
unique ; it contradicts other laws, and is so myste- 
rious that it can hardly be included in science. As 
for all else, we wait while the physicists strip from 
matter one husk after another, and change our de- 
finitions accordingly. 

The world of mind and morals is not only the 
authoritative world, but it gives the law to science ; 
the thought of a law of nature goes before the pro- 
cess of the law and determines it. To set physical 
science and its ascertained knowledge against mental 
and moral truth is like a shadow turning against the 
light, or like a flower contradicting the root. It is 
only by mind that we know matter, and to use a pro- 
duct for discrediting its source is absurd. 



234 EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 

Science is all the while solving physical mysteries, 
not by bringing them within its present terms, but 
by enlarging its boundaries. There are still many 
mysteries that sit in the clouds and laugh at our 
science with its doctrines of force and environment, 
and there they are likely to remain till science can 
infold them within a larger circle. The key to the 
whole subject is a broader generalization ; think far 
and wide and high, enlarge your science, and per- 
plexity will vanish. 

At the risk of repetition I will state the generali- 
zation that contains a solution of the questions that 
put religion in apparent conflict with evolution and 
its laws. The main fact in evolution is force work- 
ing uniformly ; but evolution does not explain force ; 
it receives it from some will, which is its only 
possible origin. But will is an attribute of person- 
ality, and is the basis and a large part of religion. 
We have, therefore, in religion an original factor 
which is found in the process of evolution, — not as 
an essential element, but simply as a method of 
operation. Religion, therefore, is not compassed by 
the evolutionary process and laws, but is directly re- 
lated to the eternal will that imparts its force to the 
process of evolution. In other words, religion is 
not correlated to a method of force, but to force 
itself, that is, to the eternal will. Eeligion therefore 
stands in freedom, for will is free. Nature seems to 
be under apparent necessity, but only apparent be- 
cause of the uniformity of its action, behind which 
lies the absolute free will of God. If we were under 
a different sense of time, a woodsman felling a tree 



EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 235 

would seem to be acting under necessity, so uniform 
and sustained are his strokes ; he can stop at any 
moment, but his purpose keeps his action constant 
for an hour, which might seem an aeon to a differ- 
ently constituted being. The uniformity in nature is 
no more indicative of necessity than the uniform 
shape of printing-letters is indicative that their mean- 
ing is contained in their uniform shape. L-i-b-e-r-t-y 
is invariably and necessarily used to spell that word, 
but it does not therefore mean necessity. A pound- 
weight is necessarily the same, but does a pound 
mean only a uniform weight, or does it mean justice 
in trade? and does it not ultimately mean, and even 
have its origin in, a will that can choose between just 
and unjust weights ? Clerk Maxwell says that the 
conservation of energy as illustrated in the processes 
of nature, which is the ground for the common belief 
in necessity, is not indicative of its nature, but of 
some power which so arranges atoms that energy is 
conserved. Thus the steady play of force is not an 
original nor an ultimate fact, but is subordinate to 
some superior fact. The uniformity of nature may 
mask the fullest freedom. 

But if man is involved in the evolutionary pro- 
cess, where and when and how does the free will 
come in, with all the facts and duties of religion ? 
We may not be able to say when and where, but 
possibly we can tell how ; namely, in the progressive 
working of God. To produce a will or a person 
seems to be the end in view of the whole process, 
and at last it is gained. It is often said that free- 
dom cannot come out of necessity, nor altruism out 



236 EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 

of egoism; doubtless, if necessity and egoism are 
absolute, and not phases of a process. The very 
uniformity of force may be a condition of the result 
— freedom, and egoism may be the path to altruism. 
The difficulty of getting from one to the other is no 
greater than in passing from the chemical to the 
vital. But when the result is reached, the conditions 
under which it was produced may be relaxed. And 
so we have man — a free will, himself a force acting 
in creative ways. If it be asked where he gets his 
free will, the answer is, from the same source from 
which matter gets its force — God. He may get it 
through nature, but he gets it from God working by 
nature. Hence, when we come to discuss the prob- 
lems of religion, — duty, conscience, faith, prayer, rev- 
erence, love, — we are at full liberty, if we see fit, to 
turn our back upon that uniformity of nature which 
seems to rest on necessity. Man stands before the 
Eternal One, and not before a method of nature. 
Nature is all about him, but his real relation is to 
God. His moral qualities may have been evolved 
through natural processes, but they do not originate 
there. The flower is evolved through the differen- 
tiation of leaves, but it does not originate in them, 
nor can it be compassed in their differentiation. 
Not only is science unable to explain the why of the 
differentiation, but it can give no account of the 
idea of the flower. It may possibly learn to pen- 
etrate the process by which leaves become flowers, 
but it must go to other schools than its own to get 
the idea of the flower as a germ of life and fruit 
and seed. 



EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 237 

I have endeavored to show that the influence of 
evolution upon the faith turns upon the form or defi- 
nition of the theory. If evolution be held as simply 
a mechanical process ; if force be regarded as an in- 
dependent thing, or be blankly named as proceeding 
from an unknowable cause ; if an observed section 
of the universe in time and space be considered as 
the whole ; if an acknowledged essential factor be 
left out of account because it seems to be unknow- 
able ; if the observed uniformity of nature be inter- 
preted as proof of necessity ; if the laws seen in the 
earlier periods of creation be regarded as universal, 
and incapable of yielding to other possible laws and 
forces ; if, in brief, there is not a Power before, 
under, and in all these natural laws and processes, 
inclusive of them, — a Power working intelligently 
towards an end, and therefore progressively, and 
therefore in ways that seem new and even antago- 
nistic to previous methods, — then evolution is dan- 
gerous to the faith. It is, of course, illogical to as- 
sert that because such theories are dangerous they 
are untrue — the standing argument of bigotry and 
ignorance. The path of truth always winds through 
dangers — abysses below and crumbling cliffs above. 
We base our protest against these theories on the 
ground that the logic and the science of the subject 
are against them. In that court of reason to which 
men in all ages have repaired for final verdicts — a 
court not of mere sensations, but of the combined 
faculties and whole nature of man, where reason, 
imagination, reverence, love, and all the passions of 
human nature, stern logic, mathematics, and univer- 



238 EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 

sal knowledge are the judges — no verdict for these 
theories can be found. It can be secured only in a 
specific school of philosophy known as positivism — 
a philosophy that postulates reason and then uses it 
to discredit it — a philosophy of the senses that plays 
in a pool within the sand-bar, with no eye for the 
ocean beyond. I would not speak disrespectfully of 
this school nor of their methods, but I deny their 
claim to a philosophy. They are useful in their way, 
and their method is a wise check upon other and 
better schools of thought. They are good sentries 
about the castle of truth, quick to descry and drive 
off the prowling theosophies and demiurgisms that 
swarm in from the limbo of unreason and wild imag- 
ination ; good beacons that warn against the reefs 
and shallow waters of half-way thought and im- 
perfect know] edge ; but they are not philosophers, 
nor is their method one that suits the human 
mind. If logically held, it runs into pessimism, 
where it meets its end, for mankind cannot long 
be induced to think ill of itself. It is enough to 
say of it here that it is narrow ; it does not cover 
the facts of its own field ; it ignores factors that 
are beyond the limits it has imposed upon itself, 
and denies the reality of phenomena that may be re- 
ferred to those factors ; it attempts to measure the 
universe by a rod no longer than the eye can see, 
and by mathematical laws with total disregard of the 
thought in these laws. The conflict of the faith is 
not with the science of evolution, but with the school 
of thought which claims to be its exponent — a claim, 
however, that we can with ill grace resist so long 



EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 239 

as we spend our time in casting theological stones at 
evolution. It is time to remember that evolution is 
the exclusive property of no one school of thought ; 
least of all can it be compassed by a few unques- 
tioned methods of nature, such as a struggle for ex- 
istence, natural selection, and variation by environ- 
ment — processes which, if taken by themselves, have 
more of chance in them than order, and hence are 
exclusive of a definite end. Evolution may embrace 
these methods, but it is not denned by them, nor do 
they contain its secret. 

The few principles that have guided and deter- 
mined the thought of all ages in respect to creation, 
and, we venture to say, will guide and determine it 
in all ages to come, are these : A cause must be as- 
sumed as soon as an effect is observed ; force cannot 
originate itself, and must proceed from a self-acting 
agent ; a law in action, as in gravitation or crystal- 
lization, must be preceded by a thought of the law, 
and hence the priority of mind ; forces working to- 
wards an end in a complex and orderly way presup- 
pose a mind and force ordaining the order and the 
end. These are the granitic foundations underlying 
evolutionary creation, and they can no more be over- 
looked or set aside than the process itself. To refer 
them to an unknowable cause may possibly be correct 
if we know only what our five senses tell us ; if 

"All we have power to see is a straight staff bent in a pool." 

But to think in this way is to deliberately build a 
wall around ourselves and then assert that we know 
nothing of the outside ; it is to deny cause and effect, 



240 EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 

by resolutely ignoring cause, and dwelling only on 
effects under the plea that the senses give us only 
effects and say nothing of cause. The human mind 
refuses to think in this way, and it disdains to be 
regarded as a Cerberus that can be appeased by mor- 
sels of empty phrase flung to it under the stress of 
logical demand. The human mind is patient with 
truth-seekers, but it will not tolerate a philosophy 
which asserts that because a straight staff seems bent 
in a pool it is actually crooked. Spenser touches 
the truth in the couplet : — 

' ' Why then should witless man so much misween 
That nothing is hut that which he hath seen ? ' ' 

Turning from this philosophy in search of one 
more consonant with reason, we do not expect to 
reach the mystery of creation, but we may be able to 
find lines along which we can travel even though it 
be forever — an " endless quest," but still one that 
we can follow without wronging our rational nature. 
Under what conception, then, can we best contem- 
plate creation ? What theory best covers the facts, 
and what do they require ? The one impregnable 
position, the J oris et origo of thought upon the sub- 
ject, is this : Forces that work in complex order and 
with design are sequents of the thought in the order 
and design. Before the morning-stars sang together 
some master prepared the measure. Before matter 
began to gravitate inversely as the square of distance, 
some mathematician fixed the problem. Before 
homogeneous matter at rest became unstable, some 
will disturbed its equilibrium. Starting thus with 
One who is force and thought and order, how can 



EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 241 

we best connect him with creation and its methods ? 
Shall we conceive of him as simply thought, and so 
have a mere idealism, — an unreal world ? or as 
force, and so bring up in necessity and the confusion 
of pessimism that turns on us with furious denial of 
the validity of reason ? or as a mechanician, and so 
make him external to the world ? or as an arbitrary 
ordainer, forcing on us the question why he did not 
ordain better and omit the needless early stages of 
cruelty ? Or shall we accept the conception of Im- 
manence, and so have a thought and will and order 
who is continuously in the processes of creation, and 
is revealing himself in a real way in them, — a true 
manifestation ? Such a conception covers the facts ; 
under it creation is thinkable. It meets that most 
imperative of questions, — What is the bond or rela- 
tion between creation and its source ? For we can- 
not escape the conviction that the relation is organic. 
We may not be able thus to compass the mystery of 
creation and lift the whole veil from Isis, but we can 
at least withdraw a corner and discover the golden 
feet that uphold it. Our highest possible achieve- 
ment will be to think rationally of the universe — 
not to explain it. Science may carry us far ; it may 
be able to link all phases and orders of creation into 
one whole, and explain the links ; it may be able to 
bring matter and mind, force and feeling, sensation 
and consciousness, desire and duty, attraction and 
love, repulsion and hatred, pain and pleasure and 
conscience, fear and reverence, law and freedom, into 
some natural relation evolutionary in its character. 
As all these things are bound up in one human 



242 EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 

organism, so they may be united in creation as a 
whole. As man is a microcosm, so the universe may 
be the analogue of the human cosmos. In this direc- 
tion we can think at least without violation of reason, 
— if forever without reaching a final solution, so 
be it. But so thinking we escape the absurdity of 
picking up creation at a point given by the senses 
and propounding the fragment as a theory of the 
universe. By so thinking we find that we are con- 
stantly transcending limits. The simple fact that we 
reach a limit implies a knowledge beyond it ; and 
so we find at last that we are correlated to the lim- 
itless and have knowledge of it. Thus we learn to 
pronounce easily and with confidence the Infinite 
Name ; and so naming it, we find it a revelation to 
us ; under it creation gets meaning. We no longer 
stand on a headland and view creation as a ship ris- 
ing out of the horizon and sailing past till it sinks 
again beneath the sky, port whence and port whither 
unknown, whether swept by currents or guided from 
within also unknown. Rather do we tread the deck, 
mark the hand that holds the helm, hear the word 
that shapes the voyage, and so journey with it to the 
harbor. 1 

1 In closing this discourse, in which I have attempted merely to 
show that the Christian faith is not endangered by evolution, and to 
separate it from a narrow school of thought with which it is usually 
associated, it may not be amiss to indicate in a categorical way the 
lines upon which further study should be pursued : — 

I. The respects in which evolution as a necessary process in the 
natural and brute worlds does not wholly apply to man. 

1. Instinct yields to conscious intelligence. 

2. The struggle for existence yields to a moral law of preserva- 
tion, and so is reversed. 



EVOLUTION AND THE FAITH. 243 

3. Intelligence takes the place of natural selection. 

4. The will conies into supremacy, and so there is a complete 
person ; man, instead of being wholly under force, becomes himself 
a force. 

5. Man attains full, reflective consciousness. 

6. Conscience takes the place of desire. 

7. The rudimentary and instinctive virtues of the brutes become 
moral under will and conscience. 

II. Contrasting phenomena of evolution under necessity, and 
evolution under freedom. 

1. Man changes and tends to create his environment ; achieves it 
largely, and so may improve and prolong it. The brute is con- 
formed to environment, but had no power over it. 

2. Man progresses under freedom. The brute progressed under 
laws and environment; man, under will and moral principles of 
action. 

3. Man thinks reflectively, systematizes knowledge and reasons 
upon it ; the brute does not, except in a rudimentary and forecast- 
ing way. 

4. Man has dominion ; the brute is a subject. 

5. Man worships, having become conscious of the Infinite One ; 
the brute does not. 

6. Man is the end of creation, and the final object of it ; the brute 
is a step in the progress. 

The end of a process cannot be identified with the process. 



IMMORTALITY AND MODERN 
THOUGHT. 



" Gone forever ! ever ? No — for since our dying race began, 
Ever, ever, and for-ever was the leading light of man." 

Tennyson, Locksley Hall Sixty Years After. 

" Philosophy can bake no bread ; but she can procure for us God, 
Freedom, Immortality." — Novalis. 

' ' The ends for which nature exists are not in itself, but in the 
spiritual sphere beyond. Nature always points to something be- 
yond itself, backward to a cause, above to a law, and forward to 
ends in the spiritual system. God is always developing nature to a 
capacity to be receptive of higher powers. Under the tension of 
the divine energy in it, it always seems to be ' striving its bounds 
to overpass.' This discloses in nature a certain reality in Hegel's 
conception, that nature is always aspiring to return to the spiritual 
whence it came." — Prof. Samuel Harris, D. D., LL. D., The 
Self-Bevelation of God, p. 485. 

" O human soul ! so long as thou canst so 
Set up a mark of everlasting light, 
Above the howling senses' ebb and flow, 
To cheer thee, and to right thee if thou roam, 
Not with lost toil thou laborest through the night ! 
Thou mak'st the heaven thou hop'st indeed thy home." 

Matthew Arnold, Sonnet on East London. 

" Christianity is ever conquering some new province of human 
nature, some fresh national variety of mankind, some hitherto un- 
tenanted, unexplored region of thought or feeling." — Guesses at 
Truth, p. 305. 

" Whenever any scientific revolution has driven out old modes of 
thought, the new views that take their place must justify them- 
selves by the permanent or increasing satisfaction which they are 
capable of affording to those spiritual demands which cannot be 
put off or ignored." — Lotze, Microcosmus, Introduction, p. ix. 



IMMOETALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT. 



But, according to his promise, we look for new heavens and a 
new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. — 2 Peter iii. 13. 

The apparent futility that has attended all efforts 
to prove the immortality of man springs largely 
from the fact that a sense of immortality is an 
achievement in morals, and not an inference drawn 
by logical processes from the nature of things. It 
is not a demonstration to, or by, the reason, but a 
conviction gained through the spirit in the process 
of human life. All truth is an achievement. If 
you would have truth at its full value, go win it. 
If there is any truth whose value lies in a moral 
process, it must be sought by that process. Other 
avenues will prove hard and uncertain, and will stop 
short of the goal. Eternal wisdom seems to say : 
If you would find immortal life, seek it in human 
life; look neither into the heavens nor the earth, 
but into your own heart as it fulfills the duty of 
present existence. We are not mere minds for see- 
ing and hearing truth, but beings set in a real world 
to achieve it. This is the secret of creation. 

But if demonstration cannot yield a full sense of 
immortality, it does not follow that discussion and 



248 IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

evidence are without value. Mind is auxiliary to 
spirit, and intellectual conviction may help moral 
belief. Doubts may be so heavy as to cease to be 
incentives, and become burdens. If there are any 
hints of immortality in the world or in the nature of 
man, we may welcome them. If there are denials 
of it that lose their force under inspection, we may 
clear our minds of them, for so we shall be freer 
to work out the only demonstration that will sat- 
isfy us. 

Whatever is here said upon this subject has for 
its end, not demonstration, but a clearing and pav- 
ing of the way to that demonstration which can be 
realized only in the process of life, — that is, by per- 
sonal experience in a spirit of duty. Or, I might 
say, my object is to make an open and hospitable 
place for it in the domain of thought. 

This result would be nearly gained if it were un- 
derstood how the idea of immortality came into the 
world. It cannot be linked with the early supersti- 
tions that sprang out of the childhood of the race, 
— with f etichism and the worship of ancestors ; nor 
is it akin to the early thought that personified and 
dramatized the forces of nature, and so built up the 
great mythologies. These were the first rude efforts 
of men to find a cause of things, and to connect it 
with themselves in ways of worship and propitia- 
tion. But the idea of immortality had no such 
genesis. It is a late comer into the world. Men 
worshiped and propitiated long before they at- 
tained to a clear conception of a future life. A 
forecasting shadow of it may have hung over the 



IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT. 249 

early races; a voice not fully articulate may have 
uttered some syllable of it, and gained at last ex- 
pression in theories of metempsychosis and visions 
of Nirvana; but the doctrine of personal immor- 
tality belongs to a later age. It grew into the con- 
sciousness of the world with the growth of man, — 
slowly and late, — and marked in its advent the 
stage of human history when man began to recog- 
nize the dignity of his nature. It came with the 
full consciousness of selfhood, and is the product of 
man's full and ripe thought ; it is not only not allied 
with the early superstitions, but is the reversal of 
them. These, in their last analysis, confessed man's 
subjection to nature and its powers, and shaped 
themselves into forms of expiation and propitiation ; 
they implied a low and feeble sense of his nature, and 
turned on his condition rather than on his nature, — 
on a sense of the external world, and not on a per- 
ception of himself. But the assertion of immortality 
is a triumph over nature, — a denial of its forces. 
Man marches to the head and says : " I too am to 
be considered ; I also am a power ; I may be under 
the gods, but I claim for myself their destiny ; I am 
allied to nature, but I am its head, and will no 
longer confess myself to be its slave." The fact of 
such an origin should not only separate it from the 
superstitions, where of late there has been a ten- 
dency to rank it, but secure for it a large and gener- 
ous place in the world of speculative thought. We 
should hesitate before we contradict the convictions 
of any age that wear these double signs of develop- 
ment and resistance ; nor should we treat lightly 



250 IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

any lofty assertions that man may make of himself, 
especially when those assertions link themselves with 
truths of well-being and evident duty. 

The idea of immortality, thus achieved, naturally 
allies itself to religion, for a high conception of 
humanity is in itself religious. It built itself into 
the foundations of Christianity, and became also its 
atmosphere and its main postulate, its chief working 
factor and its ultimate hope. It is of one substance 
with Christianity — having the same conception of 
man ; it runs along with every duty and doctrine, 
tallying at every point ; it is the inspiration of the 
system ; each names itself by one synonym — life. 

Lodged thus in the conviction of the civilized 
world, the doctrine of immortality met with no 
serious resistance until it encountered modern sci- 
ence. It may have been weakened and obscured in 
the feature of personality by pantheistic conceptions 
that have prevailed from time to time, but pan- 
theism will not prevail in a hurtful degree so long 
as it stands face to face with the freedom of our 
Western civilization. A slight infusion of it is 
wholesome, and necessary to correct an excessive 
doctrine of individualism, and to perfect the con- 
ception of God ; and it has never gone far enough 
in its one line to impair the substantial validity of 
the doctrine of immortality. We may repeat with- 
out hesitation the verse of Emerson, — 

" Lost in God, in Godhead found," — 

and feel ourselves justified by the greater word of 
St. Paul : " For in him we live, and move, and have 



IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT. 251 

our being." But when modern science — led by 
the principle of induction — transferred the thought 
of men to the physical world, and said, " Let us get 
at the facts ; let us find out what our senses reveal 
to us," then immortality came under question simply 
because science could find no data for it. Science, 
as such, deals only with gases, fluids, and solids, with 
length, breadth, and thickness. In such a domain 
and amongst such phenomena no hint even of future 
existence can be found, and science could only say, 
" I find no report of it." I do not refer more to the 
scientific class than to a scientific habit of thought 
that diffused itself throughout society, and became 
general by that wise and gracious contagion through 
which men are led to think together and move in 
battalions of thought, — for so only can the powers 
of darkness be driven out. We do not to-day regret 
that science held itself so rigidly to its field and its 
principles of induction — that it refused to leap 
chasms, and to let in guesses for the sake of morals. 
If it held to its path somewhat narrowly, it still went 
safely and firmly, and left no gaps in the mighty 
argument it is framing and will yet perfect. The 
severity and bigotry that attended its early stages, 
even with its occasional apparent damage to morals, 
were the best preparation for the thoroughness of 
its future work. If its leaders — moved by the 
conviction that all truth is linked together — at 
times forsook the field of the three dimensions, and 
spoke hastily of what might not lie beyond it, they 
are easily forgiven. When scientists and metaphy- 
sicians are found in each other's camps, they are not 



252 IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

to be regarded as intruders, even if they have not 
learned the pass-word, but rather as visitors from 
another corps of the grand army. The sappers and 
miners may undervalue the flying artillery, and the 
cavalry may gird at the builders of earthworks ; but 
as the campaign goes on each will come to recognize 
the value of the other, and perhaps, in some dark 
night of defeat when the forces of the common enemy 
are pressing them in the rear, they will welcome the 
skill of those who can throw a bridge across the fatal 
river in front to the unseen shore beyond. 

But science has its phases and its progress. It 
held itself to its prescribed task of searching matter 
until it eluded science in the form of simple force — 
leaving it, so to speak, empty-handed. It had got a 
little deeper into the heavens with its lenses, and 
gone a little farther into matter with its retorts, but 
it had come no nearer the nature of things than it 
was at the outset. I may cleave a rock once and 
have no proper explanation of it, but I know as little 
when I have cleaved it a thousand times and fused 
it in flame. In these researches of science many 
useful facts have been passed over to man, so that 
easier answer is given to the question, What shall 
we eat and wherewithal shall we be clothed ? But 
it has come no nearer to an answer of those impera- 
tive questions which the human mind will ask until 
they are answered — Whence ? How ? For what ? 
Not what shall I eat and how shall I be clothed, but 
what is the meaning of the world ? explain me to 
myself ; tell me what sort of a being I am — how 
I came to be here, and for what end. Such are 



IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT. 253 

the questions that men are forever repeating to 
themselves, and casting upon the wise for possible 
answer. When chemistry put the key of the phys- 
ical universe into the hand of science, it was well 
enough to give up a century to the dazzling picture 
it revealed. A century of concentrated and uni- 
versal gaze at the world out of whose dust we are 
made, and whose forces play in the throbs of our 
hearts, is not too much ; but having sat so long 
before the brilliant play of elemental flames, and 
seen ourselves reduced to simple gas and force under 
laws for whose strength adamant is no measure, we 
have become restive and take up again the old ques- 
tions. Science has not explained us to ourselves, 
nor compassed us in its retort, nor measured us in 
its law of continuity. You have shown me of what 
I am made, how put together, and linked my action 
to the invariable energy of the universe ; now tell 
me what I am; explain to me consciousness, will, 
thought, desire, love, veneration. I confess myself 
to be all you say, but I know myself to be more ; 
tell me what that more is. Science, in its early and 
wisely narrow sense, could not respond to these de- 
mands. But it has enlarged its vocation under two 
impulses. It has pushed its researches until it has 
reached verges beyond which it cannot go, yet sees 
forces and phenomena that it cannot explain nor 
even speak of without using the nomenclature of 
metaphysics. In a recent able work of science the 
word " spirit " is adopted into the scientific vocab- 
ulary. Again, physical science has yielded to the 
necessity of allying itself with other sciences — 



254 IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

finding itself on their borders. Chemistry led up to 
biology, and this in turn to psychology, and so on 
to sociology and history and religion, and even to 
metaphysics, whose tools it used with some disdain 
of their source. In short, it is found that there 
is no such thing as a specific science, but that all 
sciences are parts of one universal science. The 
broad studies of the day have done much toward 
establishing this conviction, which has brought about 
what may be called a comity of the sciences, or an 
era of good feeling. The chemist sits down by the 
metaphysician and says, Tell me what you know 
about consciousness ; and the theologian listens ea- 
gerly to the story of evolution. Unless we greatly 
misread the temper of recent science, it is ready to 
pass over to theology certain phenomena it has dis- 
covered and questions it has raised. And with more 
confidence we may assert that theology is parting 
with the conceit it had assumed as "queen of the 
sciences," and — clothing itself with its proper hu- 
mility — is ready to accept a report from any who 
can aid it in its exalted studies. 

This comity between the sciences, or rather neces- 
sary correlation, not only leads to good feeling and 
mutual respect, but insures a recognition of each 
other's conclusions. Whatever is true in one must 
be true in all. Whatever is necessary to the perfec- 
tion of one cannot be ruled out of another. That 
which is true in man's spiritual life must be true in 
his social life ; and whatever is true in social life 
must not contradict anything in his physical life. 
We might reverse this, and say that no true phys- 



IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT. 255 

iologist will define the physical man so as to ex- 
clude the social man ; nor will he so define the so- 
cial and political man as to shut out the spiritual 
man ; nor will he so define the common humanity 
as to exclude personality. He will leave a margin 
for other sciences whose claims are as valid as those 
of his own. If, for example, immortality is a neces- 
sary coordinate of man's moral nature, — an evident 
part of its content, — the chemist and physiologist 
will not set it aside because they find no report of 
it in their fields. If it is a part of spiritual and 
moral science, it cannot be rejected because it is not 
found in physical science. So much, at least, has 
been gained by the new comity in the sciences, — 
that opinions are respected, and questions that be- 
long to other departments are relegated to them in 
a scientific spirit. 

But this negative attitude of natural science to- 
ward immortality does not by any means describe 
its relation to the great doctrine. The very breadth 
of its studies has made it humble and tolerant of 
hypothesis in other fields. It is parting with a nar- 
row and confining positivism, and is keenly alive to 
the analogies and sweep of the great truths it has 
discovered — truths which, as science, it cannot 
handle. More than this : while it has taught us to 
distrust immortality, because it could show us no 
appearance of it, it has provided us with a broader 
principle that undoes its work, — namely, the prin- 
ciple of reversing appearances. The whole work 
of natural science might be described under this 
phrase ; it has laid hold of the physical universe 



256 IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

and shown that the reality is unlike that which first 
appears. It has thus bred a fine, wholesome skepti- 
cism which is the basis of true knowledge and of 
progress. Once men said, This is as it appears ; to- 
day they say, The reality is not according to the 
first appearance, but is probably the reverse. The 
sky seems solid ; the sun seems to move ; the earth 
seems to be at rest, and to be flat. Science has 
reversed these appearances and beliefs. But the 
Copernican revolution was simply the beginning of 
an endless process, and science has done little since 
but exchange Ptolemaic appearance for Copernican 
reality, and the process is commonly marked by 
reversal. Matter seems to be solid and at rest ; 
it is shown to be the contrary. The energy of 
an active agent seems to end with disorganization, 
but it really passes into another form. So it is 
throughout. The appearance in nature is nearly 
always, not false, but illusive, and our first interpre- 
tations of natural phenomena usually are the reverse 
of the reality. Of course this must be so ; it is the 
wisdom of creation — the secret of the world ; else 
knowledge would be immediate and without process, 
and man a mere eye for seeing. Nature puts the 
reality at a distance and hides it behind a veil, and 
it is the office of mind in its relation to matter to 
penetrate the distance and get behind the veil ; and 
to make the process valuable in the highest de- 
gree, this feature of contrariety is put into nature. 
What greater achievement has mind wrought than 
to turn the solid heavens into empty space, fix 
the moving sun in the heavens, and round the flat 



IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT. 257 

world into a sphere ? Truth is always an achieve- 
ment, and it becomes such by reversing appearance 

— turning rest into motion, solids into fluids, centres 
into orbits, breaking up inclosing firmaments into 
infinite spaces. The human mind tends to rest in 
the first appearance; science, more than any other 
teacher, tells it that it may not. But it is this pre- 
mature confidence in first appearance that induces 
skepticism of immortality. Our inmost soul pleads 
for it ; our higher nature disdains a denial of it as 
ignoble. No poet, no lofty thinker suffers the eclipse 
of it to fall upon his page, but many a poet and 
thinker is — nay, are we not all ? — tormented by a 
horrible uncertainty cast by the appearance of dis- 
solving nature, and reenforced by the blank stillness 
of science ? The heavens are empty ; the earth is 
resolving back to fire-mist ; what theatre is there for 
living men ? Thought and emotion are made one 
with the force of the universe, shut up for a while 
in a fleeting organism. What is there besides it? 
Brought together out of nature, sinking back into 
nature, — has man any other history ? What, also, 
is so absolute in its appearance as death? How 
silent are the generations behind us. How fast 
locked is the door of the grave. How speechless 
the speaking lips ; how sightless the seeing eye ; how 
still the moving form. Touch the cold hand ; cry 
to the ear ; crown the brow with weed or with flower 

— they are alike to it. It is an awf id appearance ; 
is it absolute — final? Say what we will, here is 
the source of the dread misgiving that haunts the 
mind of the age. Science has helped to create it, 

17 



258 IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

but it also has discovered its antidote. The min- 
ister of faith stands by this horrible appearance and 
says : " Not here, but risen." He might well be 
joined by the priest of science with words like these : 
" My vocation is to wrest truth out of illusive appear- 
ances. I do not find what you claim ; I find instead 
an appearance of the contrary ; but on that very 
principle you may be right ; the truth is generally 
the reverse of the appearance." I do not advance 
this as an argument, but to create an atmosphere for 
argument. We still think of death under Ptolemaic 
illusion ; we have not yet learned the secret of the 
world, the order of truth — inverting the landscape 
in the lens of the eye that the mind may get a true 
picture. To break away from the appearance of 
death — this is the imperative need ; and whatever 
science may say in detail, its larger word and also 
its method justify us in the effort. Hence the need 
of the imaginative eye and of noble thought. Men of 
lofty imagination are seldom deceived by death, sur- 
mounting more easily the illusions of sense. Victor 
Hugo probably knows far less of science than do 
Buchner and Vogt, but he knows a thousand things 
they have not dreamed of, which invest their science 
like an atmosphere, and turn its rays in directions un- 
known to them. Goethe was a man of science, but he 
was also a poet, and did not go amiss on this subject. 

I pass now to more positive ground, — speaking 
still of science, for the antagonist of immortality is 
not science, but a contagion or filtration from it that 
permeates common thought. 

Assuming evolution, — it matters not now what 



IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT. 259 

form of it, except the extremest which is not worthy 
of the name of science, — I remark that the process 
of development creates a skepticism at every stage 
of its progress so great that one has no occasion 
even to hesitate when the claim of immortality is 
made. Doubt has so often broken down that it is 
no longer wise to doubt. Improbability has so 
often given way to certainty and fact that it be- 
comes almost a basis of expectation. One who 
traces evolution step by step, and sees one miracle 
follow another, should be prepared at the end to say, 
"I will wonder no longer at anything; I have 
turned too many sharp corners to be surprised at 
another." Take your stand at any stage of evolu- 
tion, and the next step is no stranger, no more to 
be anticipated, no broader leap than that from 
death to future life. Plant yourself at any given 
stage, with the knowledge then given off by phe- 
nomena, and report what you can see ahead. Go 
back to the time when the swirl of fire-mist was 
drawing into spheres, and predicate future life : the 
raging elements laugh you to scorn. Life from 
fire ! — no dream of metempsychosis is so wild as 
that. You detect a law of progress ; but to what 
are you now listening — to the elements or to mind? 
The elements can tell you nothing, but mind detects 
a law in the elements that affords a ground for ex- 
pectation. The appearance silences you; the hint 
leads you on, and you become perhaps a very cred- 
ulous and unscientific believer, confronted by scien- 
tific facts to the contrary. If one is skeptical of the 
reality of the spiritual world on scientific grounds, 



260 IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

or on the score of simple improbability, the best 
practical advice that can be given him is — to trans- 
port himself back into early geologic or chemic ages, 
and then attempt to use a positive philosophy to find 
out what shall or shall not be, on the ground of ap- 
pearance. But I yield too much ; the development 
of life from nebulous fire is a fact so immensely 
improbable, that we cannot conceive of ourselves as 
accepting it. Take later contrasts, — the headless 
mollusk in a world of water, and an antlered deer 
in a world, of verdure ; or the huge monsters of the 
prime, and thinking man. Here are gulfs across 
which contemporaneous imagination cannot leap, but 
looking back we see that they have been crossed, and 
by a process of orderly development, in embryology 
if not in the rocks and museums. We see the pro- 
cess and the energy by which it was wrought, but of 
the source of the process or of the energy we know 
nothing until we postulate it. But, shut off as we are 
at every stage of the process from the next by its 
improbability, and only able to accept it as we look 
back upon it, and even then with an essential un- 
known factor at work, — what right have we, with so 
confounding a history behind us, to cut it short and 
close it up with a doubt on the ground of improba- 
bility? Are we not rather taught to expect other 
wonders ? I am quite ready to hear the answer of 
science, that the process under which immortality 
is claimed is unlike that of development, — that it 
cannot be gained under the same laws nor according 
to the same method. Evolution does not spare the 
individual nor the class. Life, as we see it, is a 



IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT. 261 

functional play of something — we know not what 
— set in favorable relations to an environment, and 
ending when the relations become unfavorable. 
When environment ceases to play well into the or- 
ganization, and the organization fails to adjust itself 
to the changing environment, life ends ; and the life 
of that organization cannot go on because it was 
simply a thing of relations which have been de- 
stroyed. This seems logical, and would be final if 
all the factors and all their processes were embraced 
and understood in the argument. This, we claim, 
is not the case, but, on the contrary, claim that there 
are factors and elements not recognized, which 
may involve other processes and another history. 
Science responds : This is all we find ; we cannot go 
outside of the facts and the processes ; life is a func- 
tional play of something, — we know not what ; but, 
not knowing it, we have no right to deal with it, and 
so set it aside. 

This is the crucial point upon which immortality 
as a speculative question turns. Shall it be silenced 
in its claims on such evidence ? Is there no higher 
tribunal, of wider powers and profounder wisdom, 
before which it may plead its eternal cause ? We 
turn to that which is the substantial method of all 
ages, — the necessary habit of the human mind, — to 
philosophy. 

We now have the grave question whether we are 
to be limited in our thought and belief by the dicta 
of physical science. In accounting for all things, 
are we shut up to matter and force and their phe- 
nomena ? Science as positivism says : Yes, because 



262 IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

matter and force are all we know, or can know. 
Another school says boldly: Matter and force ac- 
count for all things, — thought, and will, and con- 
sciousness ; a position denied by still another school, 
which admits the existence of something else, but 
claims that it is unknowable. If any one of these 
positions is admitted, the question we are consider- 
ing is an idle one, so far as demonstration is con- 
cerned; it is even decided in the negative. The 
antagonist to these positions is metaphysics. Faith 
may surmount, but it cannot confute them without 
the aid of philosophy. And how goes the battle ? 
I think an impartial judge of this friendly conflict, 
in which a man is often arrayed against himself, 
would say that metaphysics not only holds, but is 
master of the field. At least, science is speechless 
before several fundamental questions that it has itself 
put into the mouth of philosophy. Science begins 
with matter in a homogeneous state of diffusion, — 
that is, at rest and without action, either eternally 
so, or as the result of exhausted force. Now, whence 
comes force ? Science has no answer except such 
as is couched under the phrase " an unknowable 
cause," which is a contradiction of terms, since a 
cause with a visible result is so far forth known. 
Again, there are mathematical formulae, or thought, 
in the stars, and in matter as in crystallization. 
The law or thought of gravitation necessarily goes 
before its action. What is the origin of this law as 
it begins to act ? — and why does it begin to act in 
matter at rest ? — a double question to which science 
renders no answer except to the latter part, which it 



IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT. 263 

solves by polarization; but this is simply putting 
the tortoise under the elephant. Again, evolution, 
as interpreted by all the better schools of science, 
admits teleology, or an end in view ; and the end is 
humanity. But the teleological end was present 
when the nebulous matter first began to move. In 
what did this purpose then reside ? — in the nebulous 
matter, or in some mind outside of matter and capa- 
ble of the conception of man ? 

Again, how do you pass from functional action of 
the brain to consciousness? Science does not un- 
dertake to answer, but confesses that the chasm is 
impassable from its side. What, then, shall we do 
with the fact and phenomena of consciousness? 
Again, what right has science, knowing nothing of 
the origin of force, and therefore not understanding 
its full nature, — what right has it to limit its action 
and its potentiality to the functional play of an or- 
ganism ? As science it can, of course, go no farther ; 
but, with an unknown factor, on what ground can it 
make a negative and final assertion as to the capa- 
bility of that factor ? Again, you test and measure 
matter by mind ; but if matter is inclusive of mind, 
how can matter be tested and measured by it ? It 
is one clod or crystal analyzing another ; it is get- 
ting into the scales along with the thing you would 
weigh. 

These are specimens of the questions that philos- 
ophy puts to science — or rather, as I prefer to 
phrase it, that one's mind puts to one's senses. 
The observing senses are silent before the thinking 
mind. But these questions are universal and im- 



264 IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

perative. No further word of denial or assertion 
can be spoken until they are answered. And as sci- 
ence does not answer them, philosophy undertakes to 
do so, and its answer is — Theism. The universe re- 
quires a creating mind ; it rests on mind and power. 
Philosophy holds the field, and on its triumphant 
banner is the name of God. Science might also be 
pressed into close quarters as to the nature of this 
thing that it calls matter, which it thinks it can see 
and feel ; but how it sees and feels it, it does not 
know. When Sir William Thompson — led by a 
hint of Faraday's — advances the theory that all the 
properties of matter probably are attributes of mo- 
tion, a surmise is awakened if matter be not a mere 
semblance or phantasm ; and if force, or that which 
creates force, is not the only reality — a true sub- 
stance upon which this play and flux of unstable 
matter takes place. Under this theory of advanced 
science, it is no longer spirit that seems vague, illu- 
sive, unreal, but matter — slipping away into modes 
of motion, dissolving into mere activity, and so shad- 
ing off toward some great Reality that is full of 
life and energy — not matter, and therefore spirit. 
Science itself has led up to a point where matter, 
and not God, becomes the unknowable. A little 
further struggle through this tangle of matter, and 
we may stand on a " peak of Darien " in " wild sur- 
mise " before the ocean of the Spirit. 

The final word which the philosophical man within 
us addresses to our scientific man is this : Stop when 
you come to what seems to you to be an end of man ; 
and for this imperative reason, namely, you do not 



IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT. 265 

claim that you have compassed him ; you find in him 
that which you cannot explain — something that lies 
back of energy and function, and is the cause or 
ground of the play of function ; you admit con- 
sciousness ; you admit that while thought depends 
upon tissue, it is not tissue nor the action of tissue, 
and therefore may have some other ground of action ; 
you admit an impassable chasm between brain-action 
and consciousness. What right has science as sci- 
ence to leap that chasm with a negative in its hand ? 
And why should science object to attempts to bridge 
the chasm from the other side? Physical science 
has left unexplained phenomena ; may no other 
science take them up ? Science has left an entity — 
a something that it has felt but could not grasp, just 
as it has felt but could not grasp the ether ; may not 
the science that gave to physics the space-filling ether 
try its hand at this unexplained remainder ? Let us 
have, then, no negative assertions, — the bigotry of 
science. A generous-minded science will pass over 
this mystery to psychology, or to metaphysics, or to 
theology. If it is a substance, it has laws. If it is 
a force or a life, it has an environment and a corre- 
spondence. If it is mind and spirit, it has a men- 
tal and spiritual environment ; and if the corre- 
spondence is perfect and the environment ample 
enough, this mind and spirit may have a commen- 
surate history. This is logical, and also probable, 
even on the ground of science, for its analogies indi- 
cate and sustain it. My conclusion is this : Until 
natural science can answer these questions put by 
other sciences, it has no right to assume the solu- 



266 IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

tion of the problem of immortality, because this 
question lies within the domain of the unanswered 
questions. Not to the Trojan belongs the wounded 
immortal Diomed, but to the Greek, who vindicates 
the claim of his heart by the strength of his 
weapons. 

But has science no positive word to offer? The 
seeming antagonist of immortality during its earlier 
studies of evolution, it now seems, in its later studies, 
about to become an ally. It suddenly discovered 
that man was in the category of the brutes and of 
the whole previous order of development. It is now 
more* than suspecting that, although in that order, 
he stands in a relation to it that forbids his being 
merged in it, and exempts him from a full action of 
its laws, and therefore presumably from its destinies. 
It has discovered that because man is the end of 
development he is not wholly in it — the product of 
a process, and for that very reason cut off from the 
process. What thing is there which is made by man, 
or by nature after a plan and for an end, that is not 
separated from the process when it is finished, set in 
entirely different relations and put to different uses ? 
When we build a wagon, we gather metal and wood, 
bring them together, forge, hew, fit, and paint till it 
is made ; but we do not then break it into pieces, 
cast the iron into the forge and the timber into the 
forest ; we wheel it out of the shop and put it to 
its uses which have little to do with the processes by 
which it was framed, — made under one set of laws 
but used under another. When a child is born, the 
first thing done is to sever the cord that binds it to 



IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT. 267 

its origin and through which it became what it is. 
And what is creation with its progressive and or- 
derly development, — heat acting upon matter over- 
shadowed by the Spirit ; then a simple play of 
forces ; at length a quickening into life, and then a 
taking on of higher and more complex forms, till at 
last the hour comes and man is born into the world, 
— what is creation but a divine incubation or gesta- 
tion within the womb of eternity ? The thought is 
startling, but I disclaim a rhetorical interpretation 
and offer it as a generalization of science. What 
then ? The embryotic condition and processes and 
laws are left behind, and man walks forth under the 
heavens — the child of the stars and of the earth, 
born of their long travail, their perfect and only 
offspring. Now he has new conditions, new laws, 
new methods and ends of his own. Now we have 
the image of the creating God — the child of the 
begetting Spirit. 

It is to such conclusions that recent science is 
leading. Briefly stated, my thought is this : Man is 
the end or product that nature had in view during 
the whole process of evolution ; when he is produced, 
the process ceases, and its laws either end at once or 
gradually, or take on a form supplementary to other 
laws, or are actually reversed. Thus, the struggle 
for existence ceases, and a moral or humane law of 
preservation takes its place. The secret of history 
is the dethronement of the strong by the weak, or 
rather the introduction of a force by which the meek 
become the inheritors and rulers of the earth. Nat- 
ural selection gives way to intelligent choice. In- 



268 IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

stinct nearly ends, and thought determines action. 
The whole brute inheritance is being gradually 
thrown off ; its methods constitute evil — the ser- 
pent whose head the seed of woman is bruising and 
shall finally crush. The imperative conclusion fol- 
lows that man is not to be regarded as in the process, 
nor under the laws, nor even under the analogies of 
the order from which he has been evolved or created. 
The leaden suggestion of nature, as it destroyed the 
individual and the type, no longer has even scientific 
weight. The thing that has been is the very thing 
that shall not be; and Tennyson, with this fresh 
page of science before him, could now stretch out 
towards his great hope hands no longer lame, and 
gather something more than dust and chaff as he 
calls to the Lord of all ; for it is the appearance 
and analogy of nature that crush our hope. But 
science itself bids us turn our back upon physical 
nature, or but look to it to find that we are no longer 
of it. 

The importance of this generalization or revelation 
of science cannot be exaggerated. Canon Mozley, 
in his great sermon on Eternal Life, says substan- 
tially, " It does not matter how we came to be what 
we are ; we are what we are," and from that builds 
up his masterly argument for immortality. Still, 
it does matter whether we face the great question 
weighted by our previous history or freed from it. 
It is possible, indeed, to scale the heights of our hope 
burdened with the clay out of which we were made ; 
but why bear it, when friendly science offers to take 
it off ? Besides, man is a logical being, and he can- 



IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT. 269 

not be induced to leave unexplained phenomena be- 
hind him, nor to leap chasms in his thought ; nor 
will he build the heavenly city upon reason while it 
is confused by its relations to physical nature. So 
freed, we have man as mind and spirit, evolved or 
created out of nature, but no longer correlated to its 
methods, — correlated instead to contrasting meth- 
ods, — face to face with laws and forces hitherto 
unknown or but dimly shadowed, moving steadily 
in a direction opposite to that in which he was pro- 
duced. 

Receiving man thus at the hands of science, what 
shall we do with him but pass him over into the 
world to the verge of which science has brought him 
— the world of mind and spirit ? From cosmic dust 
he has become a true person. What now ? The end 
of the demiurgic strife reached, its methods cease. 
Steps lead up to the apex of the pyramid. What re- 
mains ? What, indeed, but flight, if he be found to 
have wings ? Or does he stand for a moment on the 
summit, exulting in his emergence from nature, only 
to fall back into the dust at its base? There is a 
reason why the reptile should become a mammal : it 
is more life. Is there no like reason for man ? Shall 
he not have more life ? If not, then to be a reptile 
is better than to be a man, for it can be more than 
itself ; and man, instead of being the head of nature, 
goes to its foot. The dream of pessimism becomes a 
reality, justifying the remark of Schopenhauer that 
consciousness is the mistake and malady of nature. 
If man becomes no more than he now is, the whole 
process of gain and advance by which he has become 



270 IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

what he is turns on itself and reverses its order. 
The benevolent purpose, seen at every stage as it 
yields to the next, stops its action, dies out, and goes 
no farther. The ever-swelling bubble of existence, 
that has grown and distended till it reflects the light 
of heaven in all its glorious tints, bursts on the in- 
stant into nothingness. 

The question is, whether such considerations are 
subjects for thought ; whether they have in them an 
element of reason that justifies a conclusion ; whether 
they are phenomena, and may be treated scientific- 
ally; whether they do not address us in a way as 
impressive as physical science could address us at 
any particular stage of evolution. Having thought 
up to this point and found always a path leading 
through the improbabilities of the future, shall we 
cease to think because we face other improbabil- 
ities ? We cannot, indeed, think facts out of exist- 
ence — the world is real ; but natural science justi- 
fies us in regarding man as under the laws of the 
intellectual and moral world into which it has deliv- 
ered him. It has shown us the chemical coming 
under the subjection of the dynamic, and the dy- 
namic yielding to the organic, and the organic, with 
man in it and over it, working miracles of his own 
— a power over nature, under laws that are neither 
chemical, nor dynamic, nor organic, but creative in 
their essence, and spiritual in their force. He is 
therefore to be measured, not by the orders behind 
him, but by those into which he has come 

Proceeding now under theistic conceptions, I am 
confident that our scientific self goes along with our 



IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT. 271 

reasoning self when I claim that the process of evo- 
lution at every step and in every moment rests on 
God, and draws its energy from God. The relation, 
doubtless, is organic, but no less are its processes 
conscious, voluntary, creative acts. Life was crowded 
into the process as fast as the plan admitted ; it was 
life and more life till the process culminated in man 
— the end towards which it had been steadily press- 
ing. We have in this process the surest possible 
ground of expectation that God will crown his con- 
tinuous gift of life with immortal life. When, at 
last, he has produced a being who is the image of 
himself, who has full consciousness and the creative 
will, who can act in righteousness, who can adore 
and love and commune with his Creator, there is a 
reason — and if there is a reason there will be found 
a method — why the gift of immortal life should be 
conferred. God has at last secured in man the 
image of himself — an end and solution of the whole 
process. Will he not set man in permanent and per- 
fect relations ? Having elaborated his jewel till it 
reflects himself, does he gaze upon it for a briefer 
moment than he spent in producing it, and then cast 
it back into elemental chaos ? Science itself forces 
upon us the imperious question, and to science also 
are we indebted for a hopeful answer — teaching us 
at last that we are not bound to think of man as 
under the conditions and laws that produced him, — 
the end of the creative process, and therefore not of 
it. Such is the logic of evolution, and we could not 
well do without it. But we must follow it to its con- 
clusions. Receiving at its hands a Creating Mind 



272 IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

working by a teleological process toward man as the 
final product, we are bound to think consistently of 
these factors ; nor may we stop in our thought and 
leave them in confusion. If immortality seems a 
difficult problem, the denial or doubt of it casts upon 
us one more difficult. We have an intelligent Cre- 
ator starting with such elements as cosmic dust, pro- 
ceeding in an orderly process, developing the solid 
globe ; then orders of life that hardly escape mat- 
ter ; then other orders that simply eat and move and 
procreate ; and so on to higher forms, but always 
aiming at man, for " the clod must think," the crystal 
must reason, and the fire must love, — all pressing 
steadily toward man, for whom the process has gone 
on and in whom it ends, because he — being what he 
is — turns on these very laws that produced him and 
reverses their action. The instincts have died out ; 
for necessity there is freedom ; for desire there is 
conscience ; natural selection is lost in intelligence ; 
the struggle for existence is checked and actually 
reversed under the moral nature, so that the weak 
live and the strong perish unless they protect the 
weak. A being who puts a contrast on all the rav- 
ening creation behind him, and lifts his face toward 
the heavens in adoration, and throws the arms of his 
saving love around all living things, and so falls into 
sympathetic affinity with God himself and becomes 
a conscious creator of what is good and true and 
beautiful — such is man. What will God do with 
this being, the product of countless aeons of creative 
energy ? What will God do with his own image ? is 
the piercing question put to reason. I speak of ideal 



IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT. 273 

man — the man that has been and shall be ; of the 
meek who inherit the earth and rule over it in the 
sovereign power of love and goodness. How much 
of time, what field of existence and action, will God 
grant to this being ? The pulses of his heart wear 
out in less than a hundred years. Ten years are re- 
quired for intelligence to replace the loss of instinct, 
so that relatively his full life is briefer than that of 
the higher animals. A quarter of his years is re- 
quired for physical and mental development ; a half 
is left for work and achievement, and the rest for 
dying. And he dies saying: I am the product of 
eternity, and I can return into eternity ; I have lived 
under the inspiration of eternal life, and I may 
claim it ; I have loved my God, my child, my brother 
man, and I know that love is an eternal thing ; it 
has so announced itself to me, and I pass into its 
perfect and eternal realization. Measure this being 
thus, and then ask reason, ask God himself, if his 
mortal life is a reasonable existence. There is no 
proportion between the production of man and his 
duration ; it is like spending a thousand years in 
building a pyrotechnic piece that burns against the 
sky for one moment and leaves the blackness of a 
night never again to be lighted. Such a destiny 
can be correlated to no possible conception of God 
nor of the world except that of pessimism — the 
philosophy of chaos — the logic that assumes or- 
der to prove disorder — that uses consciousness to 
show that it is a disease. But any rational concep- 
tion of God forces us to the conclusion that he will 
hold on to the final product of his long, creative 



274 IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

process. If man were simply a value, a fruit of 
use, an actor of intelligence, a creator of good, he 
would be worth preserving; but if God loves man 
and man loves God, and so together they realize the 
ultimate and highest conception of being and des- 
tiny, it is impossible to believe that the knife of 
Omnipotence will cut the cords of that love and 
suffer man to fall back into elemental flames ; for, if 
we do not live when we die, we pass into the realm 
of oxygen. Perhaps it is our destiny — it must be 
under some theories; but it is not yet necessary 
under any accredited theory of science or philosophy 
to conceive of God as a Moloch burning his children 
in his fiery arms, nor as a Saturn devouring his own 
offspring. 

I am well aware that just here a distinction is 
made that takes off the edge of these horrible conclu- 
sions, — namely, that humanity survives though the 
individual perishes. This theory, which is not re- 
cent, has its origin in that phase of nature which 
shows a constant disregard of the individual and a 
steady care for the type or class. It found its way 
from science into literature, where it took on the 
form of lofty sentiment and became almost a reli- 
gion. It is a product of the too hasty theory that 
we may carry the analogies of nature over into the 
world of man, and lay them down squarely and with- 
out qualification as though they compassed him. 
Science no longer does this, but the blunder lives 
on in literature and the every-day thought of the 
world. But suppose it were true that the individual 
perishes and humanity survives, how much relief 



IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT. 275 

does it afford to thought ? It simply lengthens the 
day that must end in horrible doom. For the ques- 
tion recurs, how long will humanity continue ? For 
long, indeed, if man can preserve the illusion of im- 
mortality and the kindred illusions of love and duty 
and sacrifice that go with it, and can be kept apart 
from an altruism that defeats itself by cutting the 
nerve of personality. Humanity will stay long upon 
the earth if love and conscience are fed by their 
proper and only sustaining inspirations ; but even 
then how long will the earth entertain that golden 
era when the individual shall peacefully live out his 
allotted years, and yield up the store of his life to 
the general fund of humanity, in the utter content 
of perfect negation ? I might perhaps make a total 
sacrifice for an eternal good, but I will sit down with 
the pessimists sooner than sacrifice myself for a tem- 
porary good ; the total cannot be correlated to the 
temporary. If such sacrifice is ever made, it is the 
insanity of self-estimate, or rather is the outcome of 
an unconscious sense of a continuous life. How long 
do I live on in humanity ? Only till the crust of the 
earth becomes a little thicker, and days and nights 
grow longer, and the earth sucks the air into its " in- 
terlunar caves " — now a sister to the moon. Chaos 
does not lie behind this world, but ahead. 

" Many an seon moulded earth before her highest man was horn ; 
Many an seon, too, may pass when earth is manless and forlorn. ' ' 

The picture of the evolution of man through " dra- 
gons of the prime " is not so dreadful as that fore- 
shadowed when the world shall have grown old, and 
environment no longer favors full life. Humanity 



276 IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

may mount high, but it must go down and reverse 
the steps of its ascent. Its lofty altruism will die 
out under hard conditions ; the struggle for existence 
will again resume its sway, and hungry hordes will 
fish in shallowing seas, and roam in the blasted for- 
ests of a dying world, breathing a thin atmosphere 
under which man shrinks towards inevitable extinc- 
tion. Science paints the picture, but reason disdains 
it as the probable outcome of humanity. The future 
of this world as the abode of humanity is a mystery, 
though not wholly a dark one ; but under no possi- 
ble conception can the world be regarded as the 
theatre of the total history of the race. 

A modification of this view is the theory that sets 
aside personality and asserts a return of the indi- 
vidual life into God. Mr. Emerson in an essay, the 
suggestive value of which is very great, says : " I 
confess that everything connected with our person- 
ality fails." It would be easy to quote Emerson 
against himself, but that were no gain. He wrote 
this sentence too early to have the advantage of re- 
cent science. In that play of nature on which he 
fixed his gaze years before Darwin, he saw indeed 
that " nature never spares the individual," but his 
prophetic soul did not reveal to him the things to be. 
The interpretation of science, as now given, tells us 
that when man is reached in the process of develop- 
ment nature does spare the individual, or, more prop- 
erly, the person. It is the very thing nature has 
been aiming at all along, namely, to produce a per- 
son and then preserve him. The whole trend of the 
laws in social and intelligent humanity is toward 



IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT. 277 

securing a full personality, and a defense and per- 
petuity of it. Emerson apparently never caught 
sight of the fact that in humanity there is a reversal 
of those laws by which matter and brute-life led up 
to man. He looked at nature more closely than 
Plato dared, and was dazzled. 

This altruism which assumes for itself a loftier mo- 
rality in its willingness to part with personality and 
live on simply as influence and force, sweetening hu- 
man life and deepening the blue of heaven, — a view 
that colors some unfortunate pages of both literature 
and science, — is one of those theories that contains 
within itself its own refutation. It regards person- 
ality almost as an immorality : lose yourself in the 
general good ; it is but selfish to claim existence for 
self. It may be, indeed, but not if personality has 
attained to the law of love and service. Personal- 
ity may not only reverse the law of selfishness, but 
it is the only condition under which it can be wholly 
reversed. If I can remain a person, I can love and 
serve, — I may be a perpetual generator of love and 
service; but if I cease to exist, I cease to create 
them, and leave a mere echo or trailing influence 
thinning out into an unmeaning universe. Such an 
altruism limits the use and force of character to the 
small opportunity of human life ; it is so much and 
no more, however long it may continue to act ; but 
the altruism of ideal and enduring personality con- 
tinues to act forever, and possibly on an increasing 
scale. This altruism of benevolent annihilation cuts 
away the basis of its action ; it pauperizes itself by 
one act of giving, — breaks its bank in the generosity 



278 IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

of its issue. It is one thing to see the difficulties in 
the way of immortality, but quite another thing to 
erect annihilation into morality ; and it is simply a 
blunder in logic to claim for such morality a supe* 
riority over that of those who hope to live on, wear- 
ing the crown of personality that struggling nature 
has placed on their heads, and serving its Author 
forever and ever. The simple desire to live is 
neither moral nor immoral, but the desire to live for 
service and love is the highest morality and the only 
true altruism. 

I will not follow the subject into those fields of 
human life and spiritual experience where the assur- 
ances of immortality mount into clear vision, my aim 
having been to lessen the weight of the physical 
world as it hangs upon us in our upward flight. We 
cannot cut the bond that binds us to the world by 
pious assertion, nor cast it off by ecstatic struggles 
of the spirit, nor unbind it by any half-way processes 
of logic, nor by turning our back upon ascertained 
knowledge. We must have a clear path behind us 
if we would have a possible one before us. 

There are three chief realities, no one of which 
can be left out in attempts to solve the problem of 
destiny : man, the world, and God. We must think 
of them in an orderly and consistent way. One re- 
ality cannot destroy nor lessen the force of another. 
If there has been apparent conflict in the past, it 
now seems to be drawing to a close ; the world agrees 
with theism, and matter no longer denies spirit. If 
at one time, matter threatened to possess the universe 
and include it under its laws, it has withdrawn its 



IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT. 279 

claim, and even finds itself driven to mind and to 
spirit as the larger factors of its own problems. 
Mind now has full liberty to think consistently of 
itself and of God, and, with such liberty, it finds 
itself driven to the conclusion of immortality by 
every consideration of its nature and by every fact 
of its condition, — its only refuge against hopeless 
mental confusion. 

Not from consciousness only, — knowing ourselves 
to be what we are, — but out of the mystery of our- 
selves, may we draw this sublime hope ; for we are 
correlated not only to the known, but to the un- 
known. The spirit transcends the visible, and by 
dream, by vision, by inextinguishable desire, by the 
unceasing cry of the conscious creature for the Cre- 
ator, by the aspiration after perfection, by the pres- 
sure of evil and by the weight of sorrow, penetrates 
the realms beyond, knowing there must be meaning 
and purpose and end for the mystery that it is. 



-* 



MAN THE FINAL FORM IN CREATION. 



" The death and the resurrection of the Christ are always to be 
connected with the ascension. This is the witness that no limits of 
time or space can separate the Christ from the world which he 
has redeemed. It is the witness that the heavens are opened, and 
that their life becomes henceforth one with the life of earth. It 
becomes an incentive to duty in a life of faith and hope. It is the 
evidence of a pure and redeemed and glorified humanity. It ful- 
fills the transfiguration in the eternal glory of the Son of man.' ' — 
Elisha Mulford, LL. D., The Republic of God, p. 257. 

" The resurrection of Christ is a revelation of a general law of 
resurrection, and that law and order of life in the resurrection is in 
continuity with, and is the fulfillment of, the lower laws and pro- 
cesses of created life up to man." — Rev. Newman Smyth, D. D., 
Preface to revised ed. of Old Faiths in New Lights. 

4 ' As physical science has brought us to the conclusion that back 
of all the phenomena of the natural universe there lies veiled an 
invisible universe of forces, and that these forces may ultimately be 
reduced to one pervading force, in which the essential unity of the 
physical universe consists, and as philosophy has further advanced 
the rational conjecture that this ultimate all-pervading force is 
simply will, so the great Teacher holds up before us the spiritual 
world as a system in the same way pervaded by one life, — a life 
revealed in him as its highest human manifestation, but meant 
to be shared by all those who, by faith, become partakers of his 
nature. When, therefore, we are told that the Word, by whom all 
things were created, was made flesh and dwelt among us, — in other 
words, that the eternal reason by which the creation from the be- 
ginning has been shaped, in the fullness of time allied itself with 
human intelligence and with human will, — we are not only told 
nothing that science contradicts, but we have hinted to us a law of 
the spiritual world which the laws of the natural world confirm, 
and with which all the last conclusions of science stand up in 
striking and convincing parallel." — Prof. J. Lewis DiMAN, D. D., 
Orations and Essays, p. 409. 



MAN THE FINAL FOKM IN CREATION. 



The earth beareth fruit of herself ; first the blade, then the ear, 
then the full corn in the ear. — St. Mark iv. 28. 

Our Lord nowhere defines the kingdom of Heaven, 
but many times over tells us what it is like. A great 
teacher does not indulge in definitions ; for a defini- 
tion by its nature implies logical processes and con- 
clusions that shut one up within one's own mind, 
subject to its weaknesses and limitations. Christ 
puts himself in contrast with the dogmatist who 
frames a definition that necessarily imprisons him, 
by opening a universe — undefinable, but clearly ap- 
prehended. Search it thoughout, he says, and you 
will find that all things are in harmony, one truth 
in all truths. The dogmatist proves a point, Christ 
reveals the universe of truth ; one drives us to some 
definite action, the other inspires us with a sense of 
duty ; one binds us, the other leaves us in freedom. 
A great truth can be conveyed only by a great illus- 
tration ; but Christ's method went farther and con- 
nected the truth with the process and fact he uses : 
the same force, the same order, the same movement, 
are in the illustration and in the truth illustrated ; 
and one sets forth the other because they have such a 



284 MAN THE FINAL FORM IN CREATION. 

relation. The kingdom of Heaven is like growing 
corn, not because the Oriental fancy discerns an 
external likeness, but because the same power lies 
behind the springing corn and the unfolding king- 
dom inducing their likeness; they correspond, be- 
cause both are ordained by one mind and put into 
one order. 

Christ likened the kingdom of Heaven to two 
fields of action, — growth in the organic world, and 
the spontaneous action of the human heart in the 
natural and every-day relations of life. It is like 
seed sown, like growing corn, like working leaven, 
like mustard -seed and a fig-tree, like wheat and 
tares, and fermenting wine. It is like the play of 
the mind when men lose sheep or money or sons, when 
they are intrusted with money, when they go to feasts 
and weddings, when they pray, when they catch fish, 
and barter, and mend garments, and build houses. 
The world of unfolding nature and the world of 
human life, — here are set down the laws, the meth- 
ods, and the outcome of this great order named the 
Kingdom of Heaven. Understand one and you will 
know the other. The likeness is not rhetorical but 
essential ; the revelation of one is through the other, 
and they match each other because both rest on one 
Will that works in harmony with itself. 

It would be pressing language too far to seek in 
the phrase, " the earth beareth fruit of herself," a 
reference to any scientific theory ; still there is a rec- 
ognition of the fact that there is lodged in the world 
of nature a force that works, as it were, of itself, 
and so brings forth fruit. It does not assert, but 



MAN THE FINAL FORM IN CREATION. 285 

it admits of, an evolutionary process in the organic 
world. 

The theory of evolution in some form is now so 
widely accepted that it no longer stirs offense nor 
awakens suspicion to name it in connection with 
questions of theology. One may do so without 
thereby committing one's self to any special theory 
of evolution, or to any conclusion that may be drawn 
from it. It may be well, whether it is accepted or 
rejected, to lay it beside the problems of religion in 
a tentative way, in order to see if it will aid in solv- 
ing them, or add to their force and clearness. A 
multitude of inquiring and not wholly believing 
minds are thinking upon the themes of evolution, 
who are eager to discover if they can retain both 
their faith and their science. The practical divorce 
between this popular theory and theology, that is 
often insisted on, reacts against faith, for we are so 
closely bound to this world that its apparent verdicts 
take precedence of those of the spiritual world. They 
may be specially blessed who believe without seeing, 
but others are not to be condemned who ask to lay 
their finger upon the proof that life is stronger 
than death. There is a great deal of incipient 
infidelity that might be cured if it were properly 
dealt with. The limitations that make theology an 
isolated science, and the common assertion that re- 
ligion and science have nothing to do with each 
other, are the actual sources of this infidelity. We 
know ourselves too well to assent to the claim that 
we are compartment-beings, thought-tight, and can 
shut religion up in one part, and philosophy in 



286 MAN THE FINAL FORM IN CREATION. 

another, and science in still another. When a truth 
enters into man it has the range of his whole nature, 
and makes its appeal to every faculty ; if shut within 
the heart it will mount to the brain, or if held there 
it will steal down to the heart. Man is the com- 
pletest unit in nature. The divisions set up between 
mind and will and sensibility are like the great cir- 
cles which astronomy puts into the heavens, — imag- 
inary, and for convenience only ; if insisted on as 
real, they might check the planets in their orbits. 

No harm, at least, can come from a hypothetical 
discussion of evolution in its relations to religion, 
and it is possible that much good will be gained. It 
is certainly well for all to have some general knowl- 
edge of it and to trace its varying stages in the world 
of thought, if for no other reason than to find out 
what is settled and what is still undetermined. 

While evolution is now so generally accepted 
that no one thinks in any department of study ex- 
cept under the evolutionary idea, there is as yet 
no accurate definition and no special theory of it 
which is not open to criticism. It is immediately 
urged : How can there be a consensus of belief in 
evolution without some settled theory of it? What 
is the foundation of your belief ? If it consists of 
facts, cannot these facts be formulated ? These are 
forceful questions and can be strongly pressed, but 
may be met by an appeal to the actual attitude of 
the thinking world, — holding to evolution without 
a definite theory of it beyond its bare principle and 
general method. This is not without precedent. 
The Copernican system was believed by all the men 



MAN THE FINAL FORM IN CREATION. 287 

of science contemporary with its framer long before 
he stated it ; and the system waited for centuries, 
and waits still, for full statement. Gravitation was 
held under an imperfect formula before Newton dis- 
covered the correct one, and was held as local before 
it was known to be universal ; nor do we yet know 
much about it. Nearly every great truth precedes 
its theory; it is believed before it is formulated. 
Christianity itself was a fact and a power in the 
world before it became a system ; nor have we yet, 
nor shall we ever have, a definition of it. There is 
reason to think it will be the same with evolution. 
It is certainly true to-day that there is no closely 
denned theory of evolution that covers its facts. 
Universal laws are asserted, but they are found to 
be particular and limited in their field. Evolution 
and Darwinism have been used as interchangeable 
terms and are still popularly so used ; but the men 
of science to-day regard Darwin as a great student 
of evolution who discovered the law of natural selec- 
tion to which his followers gave a wider scope than 
was claimed for it by himself. Natural selection, 
though a law of wide reach, does not cover the facts 
of evolution. 

Roughly defined, evolution is the theory that life 
in the organic world is developed or evolved from 
preceding life by descent and variation. So far, 
there is nearly universal agreement because the fact 
is so evident. But when we ask why, or by what 
law, offspring is like parents, we get various answers, 
and none are satisfactory; and when we ask why 
offspring varies from parents, we get still more di- 



288 MAN THE FINAL FORM IN CREATION. 

vergent answers that are even less satisfactory. 
Some theories explain variation by natural selec- 
tion ; others by migration ; others by an " internal 
tendency," which is quite probable, but it is a mere 
phrase and explains nothing ; others still by " ex- 
traordinary births " which become the progenitors of 
new species, — true in part doubtless, but how far 
true is not known, and, whether partial or universal, 
it is no explanation of the fact. Another, and just 
now popular, theory of variation is that it is caused 
by the active efforts of animals in certain direc- 
tions ; but it is questioned if tendencies so caused are 
sufficiently persistent to form a permanent species. 

These are examples of attempts to explain a fact 
upon which all are agreed, but are wide apart in 
their explanations. They touch each other at certain 
points and run into each other at other points, and 
all rest on certain well-attested phenomena; but no 
one covers, nor do all, taken in their points of agree- 
ment, cover the facts, nor do they get beyond a cer- 
tain limit where observation ends, — reaching a dead- 
wall behind which their great fact lies in unattain- 
able mystery. This condition of the subject is of 
great significance. It does not indicate an imper- 
fect state of science. Lamarck was perhaps as near 
right as any man since ; and science has chiefly pro- 
vided old theories with a few more facts : the micro- 
scope has only added to the vision of the eye. It 
rather indicates two things : first, that life is a very 
complex thing, and is too wide to be brought under 
a theory, — that while innumerable things may be as- 
serted of it, it cannot be put into a single category ; 



MAN THE FINAL FORM IN CREATION. 289 

second, that an explanation of life must be sought 
in a region that technical science does not recognize. 
A point of immense significance, I repeat, because 
the theories break down one after another at just 
those points where they most threaten morals and 
religion, leaving the great fact of evolution to be 
explained, if explained at all, by theories that admit 
of morals and religion. The men of science demur, 
and say, " Give us time and we will unravel the tan- 
gled thread of creation." We do not cast at science 
its disagreements, nor remind it that so far it has 
worked at cross purposes, for we well know that 
such confusion is no sign of error ; science seldom 
starts on the right path, but it often reaches its end, 
or some better end than it aimed at. Instead, we 
assert that science will fail in its quest because it 
always brings up against ultimate facts in both the 
material and physical worlds. When it is found that 
some countless millions of vibrations of luminiferous 
ether upon the retina of the eye give the color red, 
we have reached an ultimate fact; go one step far- 
ther and you are in a world that physical science 
does not recognize ; namely, the consciousness of 
vision. So when we say, I think, I will, I remem- 
ber, we assert actual processes that physical science 
cannot measure : the effort to do so is an attempt 
to get outside of mind to find mind ; it is going out- 
side of the ship to discover where it is bearing you. 
These ultimate facts form barriers that physical 
science cannot pass. It may crowd them back and 
make ever- widening fields for itself, but they re- 
main; they exist in every grain of sand, in every 



290 MAN THE FINAL FORM IN CREATION. 

begotten and conceived thing, in every acting intel- 
ligence. There cannot therefore be any theory of 
creation that is scientific, in the ordinary sense of 
the word. Science covers only a section of creation. 
It begins with a homogeneous fluid disturbed by 
force, but what the force is, and why it begins to 
act, it does not undertake to determine; it simply 
strikes in at a given point upon an existing order. 
What is back of this, what may be over it and 
under it and in it, science does not recognize, but 
cannot deny. Now here are great realities, orders, 
forces already existing and at work when science 
begins its examination. They exist and act still, 
and are the materials with which science works ; 
they are the ocean out of which science has filled the 
cup over which it is busy ; but no measurement or 
analysis of the contents of the cup will explain the 
ocean. It is in this, so to speak, preexisting world, 
this supra et sub et intra existing world, that theol- 
ogy and philosophy have their fields, which are not 
only outside of the physical world but inclusive of 
it. Physical science can no more settle a question 
of morals than it can settle the question of creation. 
It adduces many illuminating facts in respect to 
both, but it brings up against the same barriers in 
either case, giving us methods and processes but 
never causes and explanations. Hence it can deter- 
mine no question in morals or religion or philosophy, 
simply because they reach beyond its domain while 
they have a considerable play within it. 

But the theistic evolutionist refuses to think 
within this domain, and holds that it is unscientific 



MAN THE FINAL FORM IN CREATION. 291 

and empirical to start in at a given point and then 
attempt an explanation of creation and morals. He 
boldly enters the wider domain of ultimate cause 
and original force, and there attempts to think. 
He can, at least, offer explanations that cannot be 
disproved, and more and more seems he to be mar- 
shaling the forces the way they are going. Postu- 
late a creative Power, an eternal Will, a moral 
Being, and you can have a coherent system, which 
is certainly better than a scientific theory that can- 
not carry the facts. 

The point at which I am aiming is this : as nat- 
ural science starts in at a given point and abandons 
all that is before it to the theist, so a point will be 
reached where science fails and must leave the prob- 
lems of existence to be solved by the theist. As 
science cannot determine origin, so it cannot deter- 
mine destiny; as it presents a sectional view of 
creation, so it gives only a sectional view of every- 
thing in creation. It is not only a sectional view in 
time but in scope and reach. Everything rises out 
of its domain, and disappears from its view in that 
larger world which is about it ; a crystal and a man 
are equally inexplicable within its necessarily limited 
vision. 

Such reflections leave with us the clear conviction 
that physical science cannot settle the problems of 
religion, though it may furnish important factors in 
their solution. It can trace a few of the external 
features of their history for a limited time, the most 
important of which is that man is included in the 
evolutionary process so far as the limited vision of 



292 MAN THE FINAL FORM IN CREATION. 

science can observe him. But as this covers his en- 
tire visible history, the question arises, What will be 
his future history ? If he has been evolved in his 
physical nature from the lower orders, may he not 
develop into a higher order, and so become a simple 
factor of an ascending series — as much below what 
is to be as he is now above what has been? More 
briefly: granting evolution, may not man develop, 
by the law of descent and variation, into a superior 
species of being ? 

The question is worthy of discussion, because evo- 
lutionary conceptions prevail so generally that it is 
wise to discuss man under them, and a question so 
legitimate as this must be met ; and also because it 
leads to a lofty conception of man, and throws pos- 
sible light upon certain great Christian facts. 

I shall attempt to suggest a few reasons tending 
to show that man has reached the end of his phys- 
ical evolution, and will not develop into another and 
higher species. 

Evolution does not imply that any given evolu- 
tionary process has no limits or end. 

Evolution may be a general law or method, but it 
does not follow that each thing or species evolved 
will forever go on developing into higher forms. It 
is quite as probable that evolution is working towards 
a fixed end as towards a forever ascending end ; it 
begins in time and space, and because it so begins it 
may so end. If we find a tendency to develop, we 
find also a tendency to cease developing. There is 
a strife and effort to produce a species, but, having 
produced it, there is a disposition to rest and go no 



MAN THE FINAL FORM IN CREATION. 293 

farther, and it is only by great struggle that nature 
is crowded on to the production of another species 
out of existing ones. Hence the apparent perma- 
nence of species ; there is undoubtedly a tendency to 
such permanence, and there is much reason to be- 
lieve that it will be reached. Creation presents itself 
in that aspect — species produced and obstinately 
remaining such ; and the only reason we believe that 
one species has been evolved from another is because 
the facts require such belief as we study the past. 
We do not now behold the evolutionary process 
going on except in embryology, where the whole 
story of creation is perpetually repeated ; and in arti- 
ficial experiments with certain animals, which are not 
wholly satisfactory, as they show a tendency to ster- 
ility and reversion. Evidently the end of a process 
has been reached, or nearly reached. The struggle 
for existence and natural selection go on, and en- 
vironment changes, but plant and tree and animal 
remain the same, and wear an aspect of finality. 
Nature has done what she strove to do, namely, 
evolved species, and, having gained her end, ceases 
from effort in that direction. The oak and the 
maple intertwine their boughs for a thousand years, 
but do not modify each other. The rose and the 
poppy blossom in the same garden for countless 
generations, but the rose distills no sleep and the 
poppy does not rob the rose of its perfume. 

We not only have the fact of permanence of species 
before us, but it is explicable if we can be content to 
regard evolution as a simple process, and decline to 
grant unlimited sweep to the laws of natural selec- 



294 MAN THE FINAL FORM IN CREATION. 

tion and variation. It is neither good logic nor 
good science to assert that the observed processes 
of evolution are equal to evolution. Logic and 
science indicate that evolution is the working out 
of a definite design with reference to a definite 
end; the laws themselves are the merest slaves of 
the design. This design and end is the production 
of species. When these are produced, the laws 
either cease to act, or show a tendency to cease, — 
if not wholly in the lower species, an ever-increasing 
tendency to do so in the higher, — thus indicating 
that an end of physical variation will be reached. 

For the sake of entire clearness, let me say again 
that science itself does not require us to assign un- 
limited and endless sweep to the laws of struggle 
for existence, natural selection, and variation ; they 
work towards definite ends, then stop and give 
way to other laws that may be analogous to them 
in some respects, but in others are the reversal of 
them. It is equally scientific, and it is far more 
reasonable because it takes in a larger group of 
facts, to assert that evolution, having produced man, 
has done what it was set to do and goes no farther. 

The effort of nature seems to have been to pro- 
duce a person, and, having done this, the work of 
evolving creation ceases and rests from its labors. 

What is a person ? A being having intellect, feel- 
ing, and will, and consciousness of itself as such. 
The brute world produces individuals but not per- 
sons. An individual is one of a class, distinct from 
it but not to the point of consciousness ; a person is 
not only one of a class, but knows himself as one. 



MAN THE FINAL FORM IN CREATION. 295 

An individual is not free because it is not wholly 
detached from its species, but a person is wholly de- 
tached, and therefore is wholly free ; a person only 
can say / and Thou. The brutes certainly have 
mind and feeling and will, but only in a rudimen- 
tary and partial way. Suppose a brute of a higher 
order were capable of self - analysis, it would be 
obliged to say of itself : " I think, but I have not a 
full mind ; I do nothing reflectively, but because I 
feel that I must ; I love, but I see that I cease to love 
after a little, nor can I tell why I love ; I have will 
up to a certain point, — I can defend myself and 
seek food, and I can learn to obey, but I feel myself 
driven by a power that I do not understand, nor can 
I resist doing what I am moved to do ; I am a part 
of that which is around me, and I cannot detach my- 
self from it." Man is not obliged to speak of him- 
self in such terms. He can think perfectly, that is, 
reflectively and up to the verge of his knowledge; 
if he could see farther and know more facts, he is 
conscious that he could reflect upon them. He can 
love perfectly because he can choose to die for what 
he loves ; that is, he can cast the whole of himself 
into the act of love. He can will perfectly ; that is, 
when he makes a choice he knows that it is a real 
choice : he knows and weighs the motives on either 
side. He knows himself as distinct from creation, — 
drawn out from it and still bound to it by a thou- 
sand cords, but still so separate from it that he can 
say : " I am /, and am not it." 

These full attributes and this full consciousness 
constitute personality. We need not hesitate to say 



296 MAN THE FINAL FORM IN CREATION. 

that man, ideal man, is a perfect being. He may 
go on indefinitely towards an enlargement of his 
powers ; he may think more widely, love more in- 
tensely, choose more wisely, and grow into an ever- 
deepening sense of selfhood ; but there is no occa- 
sion for his changing into another kind of being. 
His limitations are not indications that he is not al- 
ready a perfect being. A greater and more complex 
physical development would not necessarily yield a 
superior creature. Voltaire points one of his severest 
gibes at human nature in the fable in which he trans- 
fers an inhabitant of the earth to one of the larger 
planets, and sets him to talking with the people he 
finds there, — a very discontented lot, who grumble 
over their limitations : " We have only sixty senses, 
and cannot be expected to know much ; " and so 
quite put to confusion the earthly visitor, who is 
forced to confess that he has only five. Voltaire was 
too eager in his sarcasm to see that knowledge does 
not depend upon the senses but upon mind. If mind 
is absolute, five senses may be as good as sixty. In- 
deed, it is probable that the physical universe is cor- 
related to the five senses ; that these inlets are suf- 
ficient to let in the whole material creation upon 
man, provided there is a true mind behind them. 
With five senses and mind we have already come 
to the verge of matter, and stand looking off into 
a world of spirit : what we now want is, not more 
senses, — more or better eyes and ears and hands, — 
but a better use of mind. Nay, it seems probable 
that what we now need for larger knowledge is to 
drop what senses we have, and go off into that world 



MAN THE FINAL FORM IN CREATION. 297 

of the spirit to the borders of which we have come, 
and explore it simply as minds, or with spiritual 
bodies. There is not the slightest reason for believ- 
ing that a superior physical being would gain a bet- 
ter knowledge of the world than man has or will 
have. 

And so it would seem that nature, having produced 
a being who is capable of understanding it, who is 
separate from matter, and is allied to an order above 
it, will make no more efforts in a physical direction, 
but will move in the direction of this other order to 
which man belongs. If there is to be further evolu- 
tion, it will not be material but spiritual ; but there 
is more reason for expecting growth than evolution, 
because man is already a perfect creature, — the 
image of God, as near and like to God as a created 
being can be. 

There is in man no premonition of a development 
into a higher physical life. 

In every antecedent order, we may well suppose 
there is a sympathetic forecast of, and movement 
towards, that which is about to come. The embry- 
onic bird must have some sense or limited conscious- 
ness of wings and flight. As one species or variety 
is about to pass into another, there is doubtless some 
prior hint or yearning or movement towards the 
functions awaiting development. Nature makes no 
sudden changes in its order, but always sends for- 
ward some announcing herald: the force sets to- 
wards its destiny. But in man this does not point 
in a physical direction. He does not dream of better 
hands and feet and eyes and ears. Instead, all the 



298 MAN THE FINAL FORM IN CREATION. 

inward movements of his nature are mind-ward, and 
towards that world of thought in which he can secure 
all the results which a more highly organized body 
might possibly give. He does not yearn for swifter 
feet, but rather for such use of his mind that he can 
make engines which shall not only outrun all possible 
feet, but supersede them ; nor for stronger hands, 
but for inventive power to create machines that shall 
do the work of many hands ; nor for better eyes, 
but for skill to make telescopes and microscopes that 
shall outreach the power of all possible eyes. The 
set and bent of our nature is not towards more 
senses, but towards mental faculties that either sup- 
plement or supersede the senses. Indeed, more 
senses, that is, more avenues into the physical world, 
would imply that man was to turn his attention back- 
ward and downward towards matter, whereas the 
whole effort of nature has been to get him out of and 
away from it. His lessons do not now lie there, but 
in the moral and spiritual world to the borders of 
which he has come. Were man to develop physically 
into a superior animal, it might result in binding 
this finer creature faster in matter ; for such a being 
would either be more perfectly correlated to the 
world, and so might come into a fatal satisfaction 
with a transient order ; or it would be out of true 
correlation with the world, and so would despise it. 
Either result would be fatal : gross contentment with 
a world wholly mastered, or pessimistic contempt for 
a world too far removed or too alien to be of service. 
Man occupies just that relation to the physical world 
in which he can make the best use of it preparatory 



MAN THE FINAL FORM IN CREATION. 299 

to leaving it behind him. One step short of man, 
the being cannot extricate itself from matter ; one 
step beyond might throw the being back into mat- 
ter, either as content with it or as hating it, in 
which case the world would no longer serve it. 

The actual movement and effort of man is not 
in the direction of physical development, but is 
towards a moral and spiritual development. The 
effort of nature points away from the physical 
world and seems about to overleap it, and to lift its 
last creation into a world of thought and spirit. 

Man will, indeed, perfect his body and make the 
most of it, but only as a basis for an intellectual and 
spiritual life. He has already done much in this 
way, but there is no hint of organic change. There 
is reason to believe that the modern eye has a better 
perception of the chromatic scale than the Greek eye. 
Homer is devoid of color, but a landscape, to the 
last touch, could be painted from the pages of George 
Eliot or Charles Cradclock. So of music : the 
Greek ear knew little of it beyond rhythm. " Old 
Timotheus " might lead a military company, but he 
could not lift a modern " mortal to the skies." But 
these improvements of eye and ear are not organic 
changes, and only carry man over into a spiritual 
world. It is the thought and feeling in color and 
sound that we care for ; they literally transport us 
into a world where eye and ear have no function. 
Hence we infer that the next step for man is not 
some superior physical form, but an elevation into 
a true spiritual world. Already he stands on its 
borders ; he enters within it by thought and feeling ; 



300 MAN THE FINAL FORM IN CREATION. 

he cares for little else when thought and feeling have 
once been awakened ; he yearns for it with real or 
unconscious desire. He knows that he issued from 
that world, that he is the creature of mind and not 
of matter, of spirit and not of force. Behind this 
long evolution of struggling nature lies this world of 
idea and thought and feeling and creating energy, a 
real world of which this physical world is only the 
show or semblance, as the statue is only the poor 
shadow of the sculptor's ideal which is the real thing. 
Having been brought through the long process of 
evolving creation, and made a partaker of every 
stage of it for some inscrutable reason, to the verge 
of another world, so that it can be said of him that 
he has a true mind and a true spirit, his next step 
will be into that world to which he is thus correlated. 
He already moves in it ; he has its freedom ; he 
knows its language ; he can pronounce the ineffable 
Name, and can receive upon his face the rays of the 
divine glory. He can hear the eternal hymn of cre- 
ation, and knows that it is keyed to joy and right- 
eousness. He can feel in full measure the throb of 
that supreme, genetic impulse out of which creation 
sprang — love. If there is any significance or fit- 
ness in the order of things, the next step for man 
will be into this world of realities, and not into a 
plrysical order in which nothing more could be done 
than has been done for him. 

In saying that physical or creative evolution prob- 
ably ends with man, it is not meant that he is ex- 
empt from the methods of evolution. His history 
may go on under laws analogous to those of physical 



MAN THE FINAL FORM IN CREATION. 301 

evolution, but he himself will be the theatre of them. 
The law of the struggle for existence and the sur- 
vival of the fittest may continue, not as a physical 
process in relation to others, but as a moral process 
within the circle of his own powers. For man, being 
the end and head of creation, has in himself the 
whole history of creation ; the entire past in all its 
forms lives and its processes work in him, but al- 
ways within the fixed and stable limits of personal- 
ity. The atoms still whirl in tissue and blood ; the 
gases and fluids of primeval ages are a part of his 
composition ; his bones are built out of the elemen- 
tal solids ; the habits and motives of the animal 
world linger within him, and show their lineaments 
in his own ; the appetites and passions and tempers 
of beasts still assert themselves in him, even as we 
name them, — beastly. Being such, the whole pro- 
cess of evolving nature is repeated in him as a free 
moral being. He becomes, as it were, the whole cre- 
ation, and its whole struggle is repeated in him and 
by him, but in conjunction with other factors and 
on another stage. Heredity conserves and strives 
to fix the past, but the moral within him, and the 
spiritual environment made for him, contend against 
heredity, and select and nourish that which is best. 
The animal is kept down and crowded out, giving 
place to intellectual and moral and spiritual habits 
and qualities. In this process man himself is a free 
actor, sinking backward into brute conditions, or 
rising into the divine life of which he has become 
conscious. The methods and features are evolu- 
tionary, but he himself is the force presiding over 



302 MAN THE FINAL FORM IN CREATION. 

them — resisting or cooperating with him who is over 
and in all. Hence the process is moral, and em- 
braces the whole circle of moral truths, — sin, re- 
pentance, conversion, regeneration, aspiration, and 
struggle after the highest ; for all of these turn on, 
and have their meaning in, a yielding to the animal 
nature or a striving after the spiritual nature. Ten- 
nyson, whose poems are impregnated with the evolu- 
tionary idea, — an idea that corrects and redeems 
what otherwise would be a pessimistic muse, — puts 
the truth into the lines of In Memoriam, where he 
ascribes a high destiny to man : — 

" If so he type this work of time 
Within himself, from more to more. ' ' 

Such thoughts do not invalidate any moral duty, 
or contradict any Christian doctrine. Instead they 
provide a rational philosophy for sin, conscience, 
regeneration, and life in the Spirit. They open a 
path from lower life to higher, and pave a way be- 
tween this world and the next. They fortify Chris- 
tian truths by universal truth, and put underneath 
their problems the base-line that runs through 
creation as a basis for expectations that converge in 
heaven. Man needs the whole world to stand on, 
and all truth to support him ; for so only is he the 
head of creation, and so only can he find his way 
out of its lower forms into that higher order from 
which creation sprang. 

Still, such considerations might be considered as 
mere speculations were it not for the fact that we 
have them in the form of a reality. MaVs nature 



MAN THE FINAL FORM IN CREATION. 303 

and destiny are not only matters of theory but of 
fact ; his history and its stages have been gone 
through and ultimated in One who was Humanity 
itself. It is possibly more than a religious fact that 
Christ lived out the life of man in its highest degree 
and to its last form on the earth, and that he thus 
illustrated the movement and destiny of humanity. 
The presiding feature of that life was his conscious- 
ness of another world from which he came and into 
which he returned. If it was a dream, then all is 
a dream and all may go. But we have no right to 
pass by that life and consciousness without testing 
them to see if they will not fit into and explain this 
lofty hypothesis of man that we are considering. 

The reality and fullness of Christ's human life, 
and the consciousness of another world, each inter- 
penetrating and swelling the voliune of the other, 
this is the fact that holds the eye of the world and 
challenges its thought. He lived a perfectly human 
life, and yet upon the basis of it, and as it were out 
of its nature, predicated another life. He does not 
bring immortality into the world as the far-off secret 
of highest heaven, but he instinctively predicated it 
because he was perfectly the Son of Man. It was 
no problem for discussion to him, but simply a nat- 
ural assertion, — the outcome of his insight and 
outlook as he turned to the world and measured it, 
and then into heaven and saw what was there, and 
then upon himself, and found that he belonged both 
to this world and to heaven, Son of man and Son of 
God, each because he was perfectly the other. He 
saw all things ; he pierced to the meaning of the 



304 MAN THE FINAL FORM IN CREATION. 

world ; he understood day and night ; he compre- 
hended the morning and the evening ; he looked into 
the heart of the rose ; he knew the secret of history ; 
he entered into the depths of humanity, and knew 
life and man ; he saw all things and himself in God, 
and God in all ; and out of such vision sprang the 
spontaneous conviction of eternal life as the key to 
all and the end of all. Life in another world is what 
nature and man and God mean, and he was the illus- 
tration and realization of it. The destiny of man is 
thus outlined in the Christ. His resurrection was a 
real entrance into that world, and is the next stage 
in the development of humanity. His history be- 
tween that event and his ascension cannot be under- 
stood and measured until it is connected with some 
theory of man and made a part of it. As mere 
attestation to previous works and words, it has no 
weight with thought, and no dignity in a large the- 
ology. The facts are too great for such an end ; 
they must have in them the scope and swing of hu- 
man destiny. What if the natural history of hu- 
manity on this world be finished not by evolution 
into some finer form of physical life, not by death, 
but by resurrection and ascension ! Such would 
not only be a worthy end of the long, blind upward 
struggle of creation, but an explanation of it. To- 
wards some high end creation has been pressing with 
age-long steps and yearning throes. Does the uni- 
form process that has wrought to ever-finer issues 
till it has produced man, cease on the borders of 
the grave, when, if at all, it is taken up by forces of 
which we know nothing, and man is transported across 



MAN THE FINAL FORM IN CREATION. 805 

the bottomless gulf of death by the sheer force of 
Omnipotence ? or is it probable that this process — 
working ever to finer issues — completes the history 
of man, and lifts him by resurrection and ascension 
into his final state, returning him as a perfect cre- 
ation to the world whence his life was drawn, and to 
the God in whom all along he has lived and moved 
and had his being ? 

Three objections may be suggested: First, that 
such a view identifies man with nature, and leaves 
him in its grasp. Whether this is an evil thing 
or not, depends upon the conception of nature. It 
is a fact that we are in nature, and there seems to 
be no way of getting out of it ; but under a concep- 
tion of it as rooted in God, and as mounting ever to- 
wards the spiritual, there is no need to be delivered 
from it ; it might be separation from God himself. 
Nothing is gained for man by disdainful thought of 
nature ; it is the mother of whom we were born, over 
whom the begetting spirit broods perpetually. Sec- 
ond, it is objected that it represents Christ as the 
product of nature, and the mere culmination of an 
evolutionary process. But what if this process be 
met by one in the heavens, so that the phrase, Son 
of Man and Son of God, becomes one that takes 
in perfect man and real God, — the revelation of 
the mystery of eternity ? Give full and equal sweep 
and reverence to each, and no violence will be done 
to faith and revelation : rather are they thus ful- 
filled. Third, it is said that if such a destiny awaits 
humanity, no room is left for the full play of char- 
acter, and for its final destiny as turning on morals. 



806 MAN THE FINAL FORM IN CREATION. 

To this it may be said that, while the line of destiny 
for humanity runs in the direction named, it is com- 
plicated by the great fact of freedom which may 
modify its action in the case of individuals. The 
eternal march is in this direction : woe be to him 
who falls out of its line ! 

Theology must not disdainfully separate itself 
from science while it refuses to be measured by it. 
It must come into harmony with nature, if it would 
be true to itself. It is not apart from nature, nor is 
it parallel with it, nor is it superinduced upon it ; 
it is rather the projection or extension of nature into 
the world of the spirit, — that left behind which can- 
not be carried forward, that added which could not 
earlier be included, but nature still in its essential 
meaning and purpose, and in that larger sense in 
which nature is the revelation of God in all his 
works. 

There has been a fatal tendency in the past to 
make theology a thing by itself, — a play of divine 
forces in the air or above it, or a by-play to the 
drama of creation. It has already come somewhat 
nearer the world, but it must come nearer still, and 
cast itself into the stream of human life, where, if it 
is true to itself, it will not be submerged and lost, 
but instead will ride on the waves, point out the di- 
rection they are moving, and preside over the destiny 
of every child of humanity borne on the mysterious 
tide that sets towards eternity. 



MUSIC AS REVELATION. 



* ' All inmost things, we may say, are melodious ; naturally utter 
themselves in song. The meaning of song goes deep. See deep 
enough, and you see musically ; the heart of nature heing every- 
where music, if you can only reach it." — Carlyle. 

' ' God is its author, and not man : he laid 

The key-note of all harmonies ; he planned 
All perfect combinations ; and he made 
Us so that we could hear and understand. ' ' 

" It is the function of art to see and to portray the invisible, the 
ideal, in its true relation to the laws of the universe and of the 
kingdom of God ; to implete the massive chord-structures and the 
tender melodies with a deeper sentiment or a grander, one more 
tender or more triumphant, than the heart could otherwise express 
or receive." — Prof. B. C. Blodgett, Mus. Doc, The Mission of 
Music to Mind and Heart. 

" Theology and music unite and move on, hand in hand, through 
time, and will continue eternally to illustrate, embellish, enforce, 
impress, and fix in the attentive mind the grand and important 
truths of Christianity. ' ' — Andrew Law, Essay on Music. 

" The creation that now groans will some time sing." 

Prof. J. F. Wier (in colloquio). 

' ' There is something sacramental in perfect metre and rhythm. 
They are outward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual grace, 
namely, of the self-possessed and victorious temper of one who has 
so far subdued nature as to be able to hear that universal sphere- 
music of hers, speaking of which Mr. Carlyle says that ' all deep- 
est thoughts instinctively vent themselves in song.' " — Charles 
Kingsley. 

" There is music in heaven because there is no self-will. Music 
goes on certain laws and rules. Man did not make the laws of 
music : he has only found them out, and, if he be self-willed and 
break them, there is an end of music instantly ; all he brings out 
is discord and ugly sounds. Music is fit for heaven. Music is a 
pattern and type of heaven, and of the everlasting life of God 
which perfect spirits live in heaven ; a life of melody and order in 
themselves ; a life in harmony with each other and with God." — 
Charles Kingsley. 



MUSIC AS KEVELATION. 



Praise the Lord from the earth, 
Ye dragons and all deeps : 
Fire and hail, snow and vapor ; 
Stormy wind, fulfilling his word : 
Mountains and all hills ; 
Fruitful trees and all cedars. 

Psalm cxlviii. 

And they sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the 
song of the Lamh, saying, Great and marvelous are thy works, O 
Lord God, the Almighty ; righteous and true are thy ways, thou 
King of the ages. — Revelation xv. 3. 

If so simple yet absurdly general a question were 
raised as this, — What is the use or object of crea- 
tion ? an equally simple and general answer might 
be returned, namely, that it is the path by which 
God gets to man, and also the path by which man 
gets to God : that is, creation is the medium of the 
revelation of God. By calling it a path we some- 
what define it, for it thus implies a distance that is 
overcome and an end that is reached. God may be 
regarded as starting towards man at the beginning 
of creation, and drawing steadily nearer until he 
reaches man, when — being present and now fully 
revealed — he no longer requires the path, but may 
be known directly. So man may use creation — its 



310 MUSIC AS REVELATION. 

laws, processes, forms — as a path to God along 
which he climbs till he reaches God whom he thus 
comes to know directly. When God and man have 
thus gone over this common path, there is, in a cer- 
tain sense, no further r eed of it, for each has reached 
the other. We use creation aright when we use it 
as a path between God and man. It has of itself 
no end or use, and so doubtless will pass away, or 
be left behind like a cloud of dust that rises from 
the wheels of the traveler. Creation is the true 
Jacob's ladder on which the angels of heaven and 
the angels of humanity pass and repass — itself a 
dream but the basis of an eternal reality. 

Creation is interpreted to us by the five senses, 
all of which act by some kind of impression and 
form the one bridge between ourselves and the world 
of matter — one bridge of sensation but dividing, as 
it were, at the end where it touches man, and be- 
coming sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. If 
man were considered as made up of mind and heart 
and an animal nature, sight might be regarded as 
revealing creation to his mind, hearing to his heart, 
smell and taste and touch to his animal nature. 
The distinction is only apparent and is vaguely gen- 
eral, for as the five senses are but one sense of 
touch, so man is a being who cannot be divided into 
parts ; man is one. But the distinctions are practi- 
cally valuable, and are necessary to a classification 
of knowledge. By the eye we discover an immeas- 
urable universe filled with thoughts, or laws and pro- 
cesses which are based on thoughts — chiefly math- 
ematical ; for whatever else the universe may be 



MUSIC AS REVELATION. oil 

and may express, it is mathematical, and mathe- 
matics, as all will confess, reach only the intellec- 
tual side of us. It is true that we can feel by 
seeing, but if creation were revealed to us only 
through the eye, we should know far more than we 
should feel. So another organ is provided that shall 
bring creation to us as emotional beings — the ear 
conveying sound. It is true that the eye can feed 
the heart, and the ear can minister to the mind ; 
they play into each other ; still, the distinction is 
real. Hence, if using the eye we look at creation 
and find mathematical laws in gravitation and crys- 
tallization, and so infer, as we must, that there is a 
mind behind the laws which speaks to our minds 
through them, so using the ear and hearing sounds 
that touch our hearts, we must infer that there is a 
heart behind the laws of sound which seeks to reveal 
itself to us through them. We cannot escape this 
conclusion. For as the mind can get out of creation 
no more mathematical relations than were put into 
it, so the heart cannot get from sounds more emotion 
than was originally lodged in the laws that produce 
sounds ; the effect never exceeds the cause. If the 
laws of nature seen by the eye reveal an infinite 
thought or thinker, so these laws heard by the ear 
and acting on the heart reveal an infinite heart that 
ordained them. But the laws of sound rest as fully 
on mathematics as do the laws of gravitation and 
crystallization, and so point to the same source — 
eye and ear, mind and heart, resting on One who is 
both mind and heart. There are theories which con- 
ceive of the source of creation as only thought, be- 



312 MUSIC AS REVELATION. 

cause they find everywhere thought-relations ; other 
theories which claim that it is force because they 
find a universal and indestructible energy ; but it 
would be as logical to claim that this original source 
is feeling or emotion, for there is as much in the 
universe to awaken emotion as there is to indicate 
thought or energy. Indeed, as we only come to full 
consciousness of ourselves in emotions — emotion or 
feeling being the highest exercise of our nature — 
so far as we can reason from our nature to its ori- 
gin, it indicates that we spring from a source of 
feeling, or an infinite Heart. Hence the highest 
wisdom has declared that God is Love and that the 
worlds were made by the Son of God — the eternally 
begotten manifestation of Love; and the severest 
science cannot logically assert the contrary. 

Leaving the field of metaphysics, let us enter the 
world of sound that lies about us and see how vast it 
is — how filled with emotions — how thoroughly at- 
tuned it already is to the heart of man — a very voice 
of God which, if it could utter all its notes at once, 
would give forth an infinite and eternal harmony. 

There is lodged in all substances, so far as we 
know, a capacity for sound. There is none so coarse 
and unyielding, except perhaps some clays, but has 
its note, which may be brought out under condi- 
tions either of concussion or tension. Strike any 
solid thing, and in addition to the noise caused 
by the vibrating air you will hear a certain note 
or key that belongs to the thing itself ; or stretch 
any tensible thing and it will give out a note 
peculiar to itself when it is sufficiently touched. 



MUSIC AS REVELATION. 313 

We do not hear gases when they are gently moved, 
nor a bubble when it bursts, but only because our 
ears are dull to their fineness. The pipes in the 
organ have had no capacity given them, but simply 
yield up what their original substances contained. 
Once they were solid woods, gross tin or lead hidden 
in the heart of the earth, but even there they had 
this capacity for sound, and their note and quality, 
as they had color and chemical affinity. Man has 
only developed what was within them. By arrang- 
ing their shape and size and passing a current of 
air through them, we obtain a sound which the ear 
pronounces a musical note. Thus we speak of a 
brassy sound — referring it not to a law of vibration 
nor to the shape of the instrument, but to its sub- 
stance. Not only a certain kind of wood is required 
by the violinist, but only a certain quality of that 
wood will give him the quality of sound he desires. 
Some substances give forth their notes without rear- 
rangement, by simple concussion, or friction, or ten- 
sion. Water falling from various heights, and reeds 
of different lengths swept by the wind, and branches 
of trees bending under the storm utter their notes, 
sometimes forming almost harmony. And so we 
may consider the earth as a vast harp strung with 
innumerable strings, silent but full of tuneful sounds, 
and needing only the skill of man to bring them out. 
This universal capacity for sound or tone is not a 
bare and unrelated thing, but is connected with a law 
of music which has its seat first in the air and then 
in the mind of man. We find in the air the mu- 
sical scale or octave consisting of eight notes formed 



314 MUSIC AS REVELATION. 

by quicker or slower vibrations and so having a 
mathematical basis. All we can say of this law is 
that it is a law — why and how we cannot tell. Cor- 
responding to this law of the air is a law of hearing, 
so that the musical sense with which we are endowed 
accords with the musical law of vibration. Thus the 
scale or octave has two apparent sources or founda- 
tions — one in the air, the other in man ; the octave 
does not more truly exist in one than in the other. 
We speak vaguely if we say that man has a capacity 
for hearing the octave in the air ; the law of the 
octave, with its mathematical exactness, is wrought 
into his nature as thoroughly as it is wrought into 
the external world. The wonderful thing here is 
not the adaptation of nature to man, but the absolute 
identity of the law in nature and the law in man ; 
for if we only silently think the octave, we think it as 
under the same mathematical law as when we hear it 
in actual vibration. We behold here a manifestation 
of God that goes far beyond that of a skillful de- 
signer — forcing on us the thought that God is in 
the laws themselves. And so, at once, we leap to 
the grand conclusion that it is because God is so im- 
mersed, as it were, in these laws that we can use 
them for his praise beyond any others revealed to us. 
The subject is full of suggestion at this point. 
Most impressive is the teleological aspect of it. 
Begin as far back in creation as you will, — in the 
geologic ages when there was no ear to hear, — and 
you find this capacity for sound in all material 
things — no harmony, no music as yet, but only a 
note ready to be brought out, and in the forming air 



MUSIC AS REVELATION. 315 

a law of vibration ready to turn the notes into har- 
mony, and finally the ear of man ready to catch the 
harmonies that his skill evokes, and behind the ear 
the soul ready to praise God in the sounds and har- 
monies so prepared from the beginning. Here is an 
orderly sequence of steps and adaptations mounting 
continually higher — proceeding from God and at 
last ending in God in the accorded praise of his own 
conscious image. In a loftier sense than they were 
written, we may use the words of Dryden : — 

" The trembling notes ascend the sky, 
And heavenly joys inspire. 
The song began from Jove, 
Who left his blissful seats above 
(Such is the power of mighty love). 

So love was crowned, but music won the cause." 

We do not find in nature what may properly be 
called music, but only its materials and its laws. 
Man only can create music, for nothing is perfect 
until, in some way, it touches or passes through 
man. He is the end and object of creation, and its 
processes are full and have meaning only when they 
are completed in him. Everything in nature is a 
puzzle until it finds its solution in man, who solves it 
by connecting it in some way with God and so com- 
pletes the circle of creation. Like everything else 
in nature, music is a becoming, and it becomes its 
full self when its sounds and laws are used by intel- 
ligent man for the production of harmony, and so 
made the vehicle of emotion and thought. But 
sound even before it becomes music may be the occa- 
sion of emotion though not of complex or intelligent 



316 MUSIC AS REVELATION. 

emotions. It is the peculiarity of the sounds of 
nature that they awaken but a single emotion ; each 
thing has its note and some one corresponding feel- 
ing. Enter at evening a grove of pines and listen to 
the wind sighing through the branches ; the term by 
which we spontaneously describe it indicates the one 
feeling of pensive melancholy it awakens, but an 
orchestra could not render it more effectively. It 
lacks, however, the quality of intelligence, because 
it is not combined with other sounds for some end. 
The song " What are the wild waves saying ? " raises 
a question hard to answer. It is not a hymn to the 
great Creator until it has passed through the adoring 
and reflecting mind of man. But even if there is 
no music in nature — not even in the notes of birds, 
as the men of science tell us, for the birds but 
whistle — there are the materials of music, all fur- 
nished with their notes set to corresponding emotions. 
The gamut is broader than has been compassed. 
Beyond the reach of the ear of man is a universe of 
sound — vibrations slower and deeper than those of 
Niagara, quicker and finer than those of the mos- 
quito's wing, and each is dowered with power to 
awaken some emotion that now we do not feel because 
we do not hear the sound. The materialists are much 
concerned about the possibility of an environment in 
case of a future life. Where and of what ? — they 
ask. Well, here is an environment of possible emo- 
tion transcending present knowledge, and so perhaps 
awaiting minds to feel it. It is difficult to believe 
that God has put himself into creation in the form 
of emotional sounds and no ear be made to hear 



MUSIC AS REVELATION. 317 

them. If a part of creation comes to a realized use 
in man, why not the whole ? If creation is the 
path between God and man by which they come to 
each other, must not man journey along the whole of 
it, even as God has ? 

But if there is no music in nature, there is a 
prophecy and some hint and even faint articulation 
of it. In a favoring spot an echo often starts an- 
other echo, but an octave above, and in rare places 
still answering echoes not only on the same key but 
always in harmony, softer and sweeter. This is al- 
most music, and seems a call to man to liberate it 
from the prison of matter and suffer it to become the 
harmony it is striving to express — reminding one 
of that striking passage of Goethe's child corre- 
spondent : " When I stand all alone at night in open 
nature, I feel as though it were a spirit and begged 
redemption of me. Often have I had the sensation, 
as if nature, in wailing sadness, entreated something 
of me, so that not to understand what she longed 
cut through my very heart." The child uttered the 
deepest philosophy and touched the very secret of 
creation — even this, that God is not above creation 
as a mechanician, but is in it by indwelling pres- 
ence, one with its laws, himself the secret energy of 
its processes, and the soul of the sentiments and 
thoughts lodged within it, and so coming to man for 
recognition. There is no fuller revelation of God 
in nature than is found in these laws of sound by 
which he comes into the very heart of man, even to 
its inmost recesses of love and adoration ; and it re- 
quires only a sensitive, child-like heart to interpret 



318 MUSIC AS REVELATION. 

this speechless music locked within nature as the 
voice of God pleading to be let out into mnsic and 
praise through the heart of man, for so only can his 
works praise him. 

I turn abruptly from this world of sound as a rev- 
elation of God, to music as a revelation or prophecy 
of the future. I do not say the future world nor the 
future of humanity in this world, as I mean both 
and regard them as one. There is a future of this 
world in a historical sense, and there is a future 
world that is above history ; if death is all that 
divides them, and if death is abolished, they become 
one. Hence, while the distinction in some ways is 
to be retained, in moral ways the two worlds are to 
be regarded as one. Regenerated humanity and 
heaven are interchangeable terms ; they are alike, 
and one simply passes on and up into the other. It 
is a central conception of Christianity that death is 
but an incident in the external history of man. 
Hence Christ sweeps it out of his path almost as 
with the scorn of indifference. Hence also in the 
Apocalypse, with this principle to guide us, we read 
of heaven and find it refers to this world ; the new 
Jerusalem comes down from God out of heaven, and 
the tabernacle of God is with men. Is it here or 
there ? We need not answer except to say that it is 
both, but under a conception of eternity and not of 
time. This inseparable blending of moral perfection 
and heavenly existence, so confusing to ordinary 
thought, is itself a revelation not to be passed by, 
and one under which we should teach ourselves to 
think and act. In its struggle with thought and Ian- 



MUSIC AS REVELATION. 3ly 

guage to unfold the way to future perfection, the 
universe itself is taxed for forms of expression. The 
sun and moon, the stars, the sea, thunders and light- 
nings, the four winds, the rocks, mountains, and isl- 
ands, fire and earthquake, hail and smoke, trees and 
green grass, horses and lions and locusts and scor- 
pions, the clouds and the rainbow, dragons and 
floods, eagles and nameless beasts, the serpent and 
the lamb, the forces of nature in their mightiest ex- 
hibition, the travail of birth, the cities and the na- 
tions, all angels and men, temples and altars, kings 
and queens and wine of wrath, bottomless pits and 
fiery lakes, death and mourning and famine, mer- 
chants with their merchandise of gold and the souls 
of men — such are the materials of which the drama 
of human society is composed as it moves on towards 
perfection. But as the end draws nigh, this tumul- 
tuous scenery of the elements and of lower nature 
passes away, and another order of imagery appears. 
Now we behold a city lying foursquare, open on all 
sides, paved with gold, watered by a river of life and 
fed by a tree of life and lighted by the glory of God. 
But underneath the whole mighty process of advanc- 
ing righteousness and continuous judgment is heard 
the note of praise — harpers harping with their harps 
— and, at the end, the song of Moses and of the 
Lamb — the song of deliverance and victory. The 
underlying or central image of the Apoclypse is 
song, the voice of harpers mingling with the voice 
of great thunders and of many waters and of a great 
multitude, heard throughout and heard at last in the 
universal ascription : " Hallelujah : for the Lord God 
omnipotent reigneth." 



320 MUSIC AS REVELATION. 

If we take this central image and ask why it is used 
to describe heaven or the future of regenerated hu- 
manity, the answer would be, because of its fitness. 
If this final condition were defined in bare words, it 
would be as follows : Obedience, Sympathy, Feeling 
or Emotion, and Adoration. These, in a sense, con- 
stitute heaven, or the state of regenerated humanity. 
By the consent of all ages, heaven has been repre- 
sented under a conception of music, and will be in 
all ages to come. It is subjected to many sneers, 
but the sneer is very shallow. The human mind 
must have some form under which it can think of its 
destiny. It is not content to leave it in vagueness. 
It is a real world we are in, and we are real men and 
women in it. We dwell in mystery and within lim- 
itations, but over and above the mystery and the 
limitation is an indestructible sense of reality. I am 
and I know that I am. Standing on this solid rock, 
I find reality about me, nor can I be persuaded that 
other beings and things are dreams or shadows. 
It is in my nature to believe in reality, and so I 
demand definite conceptions, nor can I rest in vague- 
ness or be content with formless visions and their 
abstractions. Thus the human mind has always 
worked and thus it always will work, leaving behind 
it the logicians and plodders in science, in the free 
exercise of the logic of human nature. I do not 
absolutely know what sort of a world this will be 
when it is regenerated, but I must have some con- 
ception of it. I do not absolutely know what heaven 
is like — it will be like only to itself — but if I think 
of it at all, I must do so under some present definite 



MUSIC AS REVELATION. 321 

conception. The highest forms under which we can 
now think are art-forms — the proportion of statuary 
and architecture, the color of painting, and music. 
The former are limited and address a mere sense of 
beauty, but music addresses the heart and has its vo- 
cation amongst the feelings and covers their whole 
range. Hence music has been chosen to hold and 
express our conception of moral perfection. Nor is 
it an arbitrary choice, but is made for the reasons 
that music is the utterance of the heart, it is an ex- 
pression of morality, and it is an infinite language. 
Before the sneer at heaven as a place of endless 
song can prevail, it must undo all this stout logic of 
the human heart. We so represent it because when 
we frame our conception of heaven or moral perfec- 
tion, we find certain things, and when we look into 
the nature and operation of music we find the same 
things, namely : Obedience, Sympathy, Emotion, 
Adoration. Of this relation we will now speak. 

1. Obedience. The idea that is fastest gaining 
ground in all departments of thought, is that of the 
reign of law — law always and everywhere and noth- 
ing without its range. It does not antagonize a per- 
sonal God, but requires it ; for law is not an abstrac- 
tion, nor a mere force, but a thing of intelligence 
and feeling and purpose, and so must be grounded 
in a being having these characteristics. We cannot 
say that God is above or under law, nor that he 
makes laws, nor that he obeys laws. He is himself 
the laws, which are but ways of his acting. This 
idea does not antagonize liberty, for there is a law of 
liberty. A free-acting agent is free only because he 



322 MUSIC AS REVELATION. 

obeys the law of his own will and obeys it intelli- 
gently. He has power to disobey a law but he can- 
not really break it — it is law still. Nor does the 
reign of law antagonize grace, for grace has laws as 
imperative as that of gravitation. Nor does law con- 
tradict miracle. The reign of law went on when 
Christ multiplied the loaves and raised Lazarus from 
the dead ; he simply disclosed laws to which we are 
unaccustomed, but which may come to view in far- 
ther stages of human progress or in another stage of 
existence. We do all things through laws, and life 
itself, down and up to its widest complexity, is the 
product of law, so that the exact and absolute cor- 
relative of life is obedience. As human life goes on 
towards perfection and mounts into higher stages 
here and hereafter, it is simply gaining in obedience. 
The will grows freer, all the faculties act more spon- 
taneously, the parts of our nature grow more coor- 
dinate and tend to reinforce each other, until, like 
some well-made engine, the whole fabric of our nat- 
ure works in swift, silent, and f rictionless activity ; 
but it is still the action of obedience, and the per- 
fection of the life is but the perfection of the obe- 
dience. The New Jerusalem descends out of heaven 
as the world rises into the obedient order of heaven. 
But under what art-form shall we express this ? for 
expression we must have. It must be an art that is 
itself full of obedience and covers, so to speak, its 
history, and discloses its results. Sculpture and 
painting have their laws which they must rigidly 
obey, but they address chiefly the sense of form and 
proportion and color, and end chiefly in a sense of 



MUSIC AS REVELATION. 323 

mere beauty or fitness ; they are largely intellectual 
and yield their results chiefly in the intellect. But 
music goes further. While its laws are as exact and 
fine as those of form and color and even more rec- 
ondite, any breaking of them begets a deeper sense 
of disobedience. When we see a distorted form or 
ill-matched colors, the eye is offended, but there is 
no such protest as that of the ear when it is as- 
sailed by discord. False proportion and crudely 
joined colors provoke mental indignation, but hardly 
more ; the borders of feeling are reached but not 
deeply penetrated. But a discord of sounds lays 
hold of the nerves and rasps them into positive 
pain. In fine natures it may even cause extreme 
physiological disturbance. A statue could not be so 
ugly nor a painting so ill colored as to produce 
spasms, but such a result is quite possible through 
discord. The sensitiveness of musicians is not a 
matter of sentiment, and is the farthest from affec- 
tation, but is a matter of nerves. The protest and 
the pain are of exactly the same nature as those 
caused by a fall and concussion. But, reaching the 
mind along the wounded nerves, it awakens there 
the same feeling of anger and resentment that we 
feel when we have been ruthlessly struck. A dis- 
cord of sounds is unendurable, but we hardly say 
that of violations of form and color. This shows 
that we are more finely related to the laws of sound 
than to those of form and color, and that the rela- 
tion covers a wider range of our nature ; or, in other 
words, that music is a better type of obedience. 
When its laws are broken, the history of disobedience 



324 MUSIC AS REVELATION. 

is written out in the protests of our whole being — 
from quivering nerve to the indignation of the heart. 
There is also an exactness in the laws of harmony 
that makes obedience to them specially fine and so 
fit to be a type of it. While, as in every art, it can 
only approximate an ideal — never reaching, per- 
haps, actual harmony — it is more rigidly under law 
and comes nearer its ideal than any other. It is 
able more thoroughly to overcome the grossness of 
matter and to use it for its own ends than is statuary 
or painting ; nature is more pliant to it. There is a 
latitude in other arts that admits of defense, but 
there is none in music. The sculptor may trench 
on the laws of form for the sake of deepening expres- 
sion, but the musician seeks higher effects by an 
increasing adherence to the laws of his art. If he 
admits a discord it is not as a variation from har- 
mony but as a denial of it, and is used to shock the 
hearer into a deeper sense of the prevailing concord. 
Nor is any other art so fine in the distinctions it 
makes. Nothing can be more exact and more mi- 
nute than the laws of light by which form is re- 
vealed, but the eye is not so keen to mark slight de- 
partures from the law of form as is the ear in noting 
variations in its realm. A highly trained musician 
can detect a variation from the pitch of ^ ¥ th of a 
semitone, but the best mechanical eye could not de- 
tect a correspondingly fine variation of a line from 
the perpendicular, nor could the nicest sense of color 
perceive a like variation of shade. There is also this 
peculiar and suggestive difference between the eye 
and the ear and their action : the eye never tran- 



MUSIC AS REVELATION. 325 

scends the laws of light and form ; it always acts 
within the limits of mathematical laws, and is tran- 
scended by them, but the musical ear recognizes 
laws for which no scientific basis is yet found. In 
the tuning of any stringed instrument certain re- 
quirements of the ear are obeyed for which no rea- 
sons can be given: the problem is too subtle even 
for Helmholtz — suggesting that music is that form 
of art in which man expresses his transcendence of 
nature. As man himself reaches beyond the material 
world and its laws, and goes over into another, even 
a spiritual world, so music is the art that lends itself 
to this feature of his nature, going along with it and 
opening the doors as it mounts into the heavens. 

This fine obedience in music is best seen, however, 
in its execution. When voice joins with voice in 
the harmony of their contrasted parts, and instru- 
ments add their deeper and higher tones, — trumpets 
and viols and reeds each giving their various sounds 
— voices as of a great multitude and instruments as 
of the full orchestra, — and all, binding themselves 
down to exact law, conspire to the utterance of 
manifold harmony, we have not only the most per- 
fect illustration of obedience but the joy of obe- 
dience; one is immediately transmuted into the 
other; we are thus let into the soul of obedience 
and find it to be joy — that its law is a law of life. 
The pleasure we feel in music springs from the 
obedience which is in it, and it is full only as the 
obedience is entire. 

Thus we see how this art becomes prophetic. 
There is a double yet single goal before humanity — 



326 MUSIC AS REVELATION. 

the goal of obedience to the eternal laws and the 
goal of bliss. The race is long, and slowly are the 
mile-stones of ages passed, but when the foot of the 
runner has touched the last bound, his hands also 
touch either pillar of the goal ; he has obeyed and 
he is blest. But in all the race he has a continual 
lesson and a constant presage in this divine art of 
music — its laws glorifying obedience and its joy 
feeding his tired spirit. 

2. Music is, beyond all other arts, the expression 
and vehicle of sympathy. In the evolution of matter 
the progress is from simplicity to variety ; in the brute 
world the progress is the same in the form of fierce 
antagonism which yields the semblance of almost 
entire selfishness — not selfish because not yet moral. 
When humanity is reached, this brute inheritance 
becomes true selfishness because it encounters laws 
of conscience and welfare that require the contrary. 
The order of creation is reversed in man. The 
isolating struggle of self against others ends, and 
a law of preservation takes its place. The watch- 
word is no longer destruction but salvation. The 
line of progress does not run through isolation and 
antagonism, but through union and sympathy. The 
aspect of creation before and outside of man shows 
repellence ; in man creation draws together. Before 
man, destiny lay in a destructive struggle between 
species; in man the process ends and he achieves 
his destiny by loving his neighbor. Whatever bur- 
dens of brute inheritance and ignorance and volun- 
tary evil linger on, thither the destiny of man tends. 
The highest action of man's nature is the free play 



MUSIC AS REVELATION. 327 

of sympathy — not agreement of thought nor con- 
currence of will, but feeling with another. This 
alone is true unity. If the human race achieves 
any destiny it will be of this sort ; if there be a 
heaven it will be one of sympathy. The promise 
and presage of it are not only wrought into our 
hearts but into the divine art we are considering. 
No other art, no other mode of impression, equals 
music in its power to awaken a common feeling. 
The orator approaches it, but he deals chiefly with 
convictions, and conviction is a slow and hard path 
to feeling, while music makes a direct appeal. A 
patriotic hymn does its work far more surely and 
quickly than does an argument for the Constitution ; 
and the orator is not effective till he borrows from 
music something of its rhythm and cadence and 
purity of tone. The most persuasive orator 1 of the 
age spoke in as strict accord with the laws of music 
as a trained singer, and often it was the melody of 
his voice that " won the cause." Music leaves logic 
behind in the race towards sympathy and action ; 
if it were not itself noble and true, if it did not 
hide and lose its power when yoked to a bad cause, 
it would work great mischief in society. It abets 
reason, and only discloses its full power and works 
its mightiest results when used in the service of 
truth. Hence there is no music in nations and races 
that are without nobility of thought, and there is no 
truer test of the quality of a nation than its music. 
Bach and Haydn and Beethoven would be impossible 
in a nation that did not produce a Kant, a Schelling, 

1 Wendell Phillips. See Andover Review, vol. i. p. 309. 



328 MUSIC AS REVELATION. 

and a Schleiermacher ; and the former are as truly 
exponents of its character as the latter. 

The main office of music is to secure sympathy. 
When a great singer, taking words that are them- 
selves as music, joins them to notes set with a mas- 
ter's skill, and, pouring into perfect tones the passion 
of a feeling heart, so describes some tragic tale of 
death, every heart of a thousand hearers beats with 
a common feeling, and every mind, for the time, 
runs in the same path of pity and sadness ; for the 
moment there is absolute sympathy. If instead a 
truth or principle underlie the song, there is also a - 
temporary agreement in thought. The moral and 
social value of such experiences is great ; they lead 
away from selfishness, and point to that harmony of 
thought and feeling towards which humanity is 
struggling. 

So too in producing music, its highest effects can 
be gained only when the performers not only read 
and utter alike, but feel alike. Hence there is in 
music a moral law of sympathy as imperative as its 
mathematical laws. Hence also no one who is cen- 
trally selfish ever becomes great either as composer 
or performer; and often, when everything else is 
perfect, the defect lies at this very point. " If I 
could make you suffer for two years," said a teacher 
to a noted singer, " you would be the best contralto 
in the world." It follows with sure logic that no 
one can truly sing God's praises who does not adore 
God. No training of voice or touch can compass 
the divine secret of praise. The feeling of praise 
— not as mere feeling but as solid conviction — must 



MUSIC AS REVELATION. 329 

enter into the utterance or it lacks the one quality 
of highest effectiveness. It is said that the unde- 
vout astronomer is mad, but the undevout musician 
is an impossibility. If we fail to distinguish be- 
tween what may be called fine and genuine render- 
ing, it is because it is not always easy to distinguish 
between reality and unreality. What is the matter 
with the music? is a question often asked. The 
technical rendering may be faultless, and the defect 
lie in that inmost centre whence are all the issues of 
life and power. In the nature of things there is 
the same reason for faith, consecration, devout feel- 
ing, and holy living in the choir as in the pulpit, 
and there is nothing unbecoming in the conduct and 
feeling of the preacher that is not equally unbecom- 
ing, and for the same reasons, in singers of the 
divine praises. It is not a matter of appropriate- 
ness but of effectiveness, not of the fitness of 
things but of the nature of things, which, is always 
sincere and can yield results only as it is kept true. 
We are guided in this matter by nature itself. Any 
musical sound, however produced, immediately seeks 
to ally itself with other sounds, but it selects only 
tbose that are in agreement with it, and passes by 
all others. Strike a note on any instrument and 
the sound will start into audible vibration other 
sounds, but only those harmonious with itself. Thus 
in the very depths of music there is planted this law 
of sympathy — like seeking like and joining their 
harmonious forces. Hence it is that those who feel 
alike, and are keyed in their nature to the same 
pitch, turn to music for expression ; voices that blend 



330 MUSIC AS REVELATION. 

lead to blended hearts. Love often has this origin 
and grows through the mingled song of two voices. 
Households that sing are the most sympathetic and 
harmonious in all their order. Christian altruism 
and mutuality find their highest expressions in song 
and are fostered by it. Upon the whole, men agree 
in the matter of music better than in anything else. 
Call a synod of all the churches — orthodox and het- 
erodox, Puritan and Prelatical, Protestant and Cath- 
olic — and while they could not put ten words together 
in which they would agree, they would all unite in 
singing the Te Deum. The Prelatical churches cer- 
tainly touch a great truth when they sing their creeds, 
for a creed is in reality for the heart with which we 
believe unto salvation. Here we come close to the 
fact that music is a revelation of future perfection. 
That ultimate condition will be one in which the sep- 
arating power of evil is ended, and men have attained 
to the wisdom of love. They are no longer devel- 
oped by antagonism and isolation but under a law 
of mutuality. Then each life shares in the power 
and volume of every other, and the peculiar value 
and quality of each is wrought into a total of perfect 
unity. We search in vain for any expression or 
type of this destiny until we enter the higher fields 
of music, where it is written out with alphabetic 
plainness in the eternal characters and laws of na- 
ture. The united action of the full chorus and or- 
chestra is a perfect transcript, down to the last and 
finest particular, of perfected human society. The 
relation of voices to instruments and of instruments 
to each other, the variety in harmony, the obedience 



MUSIC AS REVELATION. 331 

to law drawing its power from sympathetic feeling, 
the inspiration of a noble theme, the conspiring to- 
gether to enforce a mighty feeling which is also a 
thought — we thus have an exact symbol of the des- 
tiny of humanity. If it is never reached, then in- 
deed prophecy will have failed and love also ; then 
the noblest art we know will have turned into a 
delusion, a nourisher of sickly dreams, the chief est 
vanity of a vain and meaningless world. 

3. Music as an expression of feeling is a prophecy 
of that grander exercise of our nature for which we 
hope. 

It is the nature of feeling to express itself. 
Thought may stay behind silent lips, but when it 
becomes feeling it runs to expression. So far as we 
can reason from ourselves, we cannot believe that 
the universe sprang out of thought. Thought would 
not have made this mighty expression that we call 
creation; it is an expression of feeling — some infi- 
nite emotion that must find vent or the infinite heart 
will burst with its suppression. Music is an illustra- 
tion of this law of our emotions, and is the natural 
expression of deep feeling. When great crises fall 
upon nations and oratory fails to give full vent to 
the heroic purpose of their hearts, some poet links 
hands with some composer, and so a battle-hymn 
sweeps the armies on to victory — the fiery clan- 
gor of the Marseillaise, or the sad, stately rhythm 
of the John Brown Hymn. History all along cul- 
minates in song. The summits of Jewish history 
from Miriam to David are vocal with psalms. There 
is nothing grand in thought, deep in feeling, splen- 



332 MUSIC AS REVELATION. 

did in action, but runs directly to song for expression. 
When feeling reaches a certain point, it drops the 
slow processes of thought and speech and mounts the 
wings of song, and so flies forward to its hope. " O 
that I had wings as a dove ; " the feet are too slow 
to bear us away from our sorrow to our rest. In 
the simplest life there is always this tendency of 
feeling, whether of joy or sadness, to voice itself in 
melody. When night draws its curtain gloomily 
around us, and all the w T eariness of the day and the 
sadness of past years are gathered into one hour, 
forcing tears, idle but real, to our eyelids, deepen- 
ing and swelling into a burden of despair, how nat- 
urally we turn to music for utterance and relief! 
Some gentle strain is sung by tender lips, or per- 
chance some chord of harmony is wafted from the 
distance, and the sad spell is broken. Goethe 
makes a chance strain of an Easter hymn defeat the 
purpose of a suicide — a thought that Chopin has 
wrought into one of his Nocturnes. As in nature 
there is a resolution of forces by which heat becomes 
light, so emotion, of whatever sort, if intrusted to 
music, turns into joy. What a fact ! Here is the 
world of humanity tossing with emotions — love, 
sorrow, hope — driving men hither and thither, 
and here is music ready to take these emotions up 
into itself where it purifies and sublimates them and 
gives them back as joy and peace. What alchemy 
is like this ? how heavenly, how divine ! If, in the 
better ages to come, there still be weariness, sorrow, 
disappointment, delayed hope, may we not expect 
that this transmutation of them into joy which goes 



MUSIC AS REVELATION. 333 

on here, will continue to act there ? We are moving 
on towards an age and a world of sympathy, and 
sympathy is the solvent of trouble. If so, there must 
be some medium or actualized form of sympathy, for 
there will never come a time when mind can act 
upon mind without some medium, and the art-idea 
is probably eternal. In some supernal sense, then, 
music will be the vocation of humanity when its full 
redemption is come. The summit of existence is 
feeling ; the summit of character is sympathy, and 
music is the art-form that links them together. 

4. Music is the truest and most nearly adequate 
expression of the religious emotions, and so becomes 
prophetic of the destiny of man as a religious being. 
" The soul of the Christian religion," says Goethe, 
" is reverence." It is also the great, inclusive act 
or condition of man as he comes into perfection. 
Goethe adds, with profound suggestions, that it must 
be taught. The highest conception of the use of 
creation is as a tuition in reverence. Whatever else 
it may teach, it teaches this, or, if it fails in this, it 
teaches nothing. There is no severer condemnation, 
no surer refutation of the agnostic and mechanical 
theories of creation than that they rob it of this 
special function. There can be no reverence for an 
unknowable cause of creation, nor for a universe 
whose processes are only mechanical, nor for human- 
ity if it is the automaton of unconscious forces. The 
whole tendency and operation of physical science at 
present — if men would but see it — is towards a 
world not of mere mystery but of wonder, where the 
only proper feeling is adoration. Materialism is 



334 MUSIC AS REVELATION. 

breaking up and disappearing under the discovery of 
laws and processes and causes for which it has no 
explanation, and all things are resolving into mere 
symbols of will and mind and feeling. Already mat- 
ter has eluded the touch of our senses, and our recog- 
nition of it as a thing in itself is a mere convention- 
ality of speech. The resolution of it into force or 
motion and of its processes into forms of thought is 
a drawing out of more than every alternate thread 
from the veil that hangs between creation and its 
Source : the veil may never be wholly put aside but 
it grows continually thinner, letting through reveal- 
ing rays of truth and glory. When this process gets 
full recognition — as it surely will — and men be- 
come tired of the senseless play of agnostic phrases 
and catch-words, and philosophy triumphs as it al- 
ways has triumphed, there will be but one voice issu- 
ing from creation — the voice of praise, and but one 
feeling issuing from the heart of man — the feeling 
of reverence before the revealed Creator. Then the 
heart of man will require some form of expression 
for its mighty and universal conviction. We have 
already a great oratorio of the Creation, but we shall 
have a greater still, profounder in its harmonies and 
more majestic in its ascriptions. 

We have in music the art-form that is not only 
fitted to express our religious feelings, but is wholly 
fitted for nothing else. I mean that music is cre- 
atively designed for religion and not directly for 
anything else. Like all great arts it has a large 
pliancy through which it may be adapted to many 
uses. Music may be made degrading and a minister 



MUSIC AS REVELATION. 335 

of sensuality or trivial pleasure, but never by its own 
consent nor with a full use of its powers. When 
music is used to pave the way to vice, certain instru- 
ments are rigidly excluded and the nobler tones are 
exchanged for " soft Lydian airs." This exclusion 
and perversion every true musician detects as a 
lack in the music itself, and the spirit of music — 
like a fettered Sampson — pleads with him for a 
better use and fuller exercise of its nature. Such 
use of music is like the look of scorn in the face of 
beauty ; no other face could express the scorn so well, 
but the beauty is still a protest against its use for 
such an end ; it is made for something better. So 
music lends itself to almost every human feeling 
down to the vilest, but always with suppression of its 
power. It is not until it is used for the expression 
of that wide range of feeling which we call religious 
that it discloses its full powers. Then it is on its 
native heath ; it gathers its full orchestra from the 
organ to the drum, from softest viols and flutes to 
tinkling cymbals, from instruments that are all pas- 
sion to instruments of almost passionless dignity; 
then it covers the whole scale of its vast compass, 
from one pure note of voice or instrument to its 
highest possible combinations, from a slumber song 
to a Hallelujah chorus. It is not a matter of fancy 
but a fact of science that music never seems to be 
satisfied with itself except when it is used in a reli- 
gious way ; it is always seeking to escape into this 
higher form, even as man is himself. We hardly 
leave scientific ground when we say that music itself 
is a holy thing, and is always seeking to create holi- 



336 MUSIC AS REVELATION. 

ness by some inherent law. It always strives to de- 
stroy and overcome its opposite — not by absolute 
destruction but by conversion. Strike all the keys 
of a piano and some strong, righteous notes will 
gather up the agreeing notes, silence the others, and 
create a harmony out of the discord. When a rough, 
loud noise like an explosion is made, the harmonious 
notes sift out and drop the discordant ones, so that 
the final vibration in the distance is no longer jar- 
ring noise but a soft and pleasing tone. An over- 
refinement of thought this may seem, but it is no 
finer than the laws of nature. It is, at least, an 
illustration of what it does in man, silencing the dis- 
cord of his tossed life and refining every sentiment 
and purpose into sweet agreement. 

Beethoven put this process into musical form. In 
one of his symphonies, he opens with four full, 
strong chords from the entire orchestra ; then the 
separate instruments begin to war upon them, strive 
to overpower them with the blare of trumpets, to 
drown them in the complexities of the violins, to 
silence them under the rattle of the drums ; but the 
primal chords, yielding at times, still hold their own, 
gather force, reassert themselves, and at last over- 
power their antagonists by patient persistence and 
all-conquering sweetness, rise into full possession of 
the theme, and sweep on into harmonies divine in 
their power and beauty. 

The truth that music is for religion is equally evi- 
dent in the fact that nothing calls for it like religion. 
Men fight better under the stir of music, but they 
can fight well without it. Business does not require 



MUSIC AS REVELATION. 337 

it. Pleasure craves it, but the voice and the zest of 
young life supply its lack. It is not needed in the 
enacting of laws, nor in the pleadings of courts. It 
might be left out in every department of life save 
one, and nothing would be radically altered ; there 
would be lack, but not loss of function. But religion 
as an organized thing and as worship could not exist 
without it. When song dies out where men assemble 
for worship, the doors are soon closed. When praise 
is repressed and crowded aside for the sermon, the 
service sinks into a hard intellectual process for 
which men do not long care. Eloquence and logic 
will not take its place — why, it is difficult to say 
unless it is recognized that music is the main factor 
of worship — a fact capable of philosophical state- 
ment, namely : worship being a moral act or expres- 
sion, it depends upon the rhythm and harmony of 
art for its materials ; they are the substances — so 
to speak — ordained by God and provided in nature 
out of which worship is made. And so the Church 
in all ages has flowered into song. It takes for itself 
the noblest instrument and refuses none. It draws 
to itself the great composers whom it first attunes to 
its temper, and then sets to its tasks, which invariably 
prove to be their greatest works. In no other field 
do they work so willingly and with so full exercise 
of genius. There is a freedom, a fullness and per- 
fection in sacred composition to be found in no other 
field. In all other music there is a call for more or 
for something different, but the music of adoration 
leaves the spirit in restful satisfaction. Dryden, the 
most tuneful of poets, divided the crown between old 



338 MUSIC AS REVELATION. 

Timotheus and the divine Cecilia, but surely it is 
greater to " draw an angel down " than " lift a mor- 
tal to the skies." 

The fact that all religious conviction and feeling 
universally run to music for their full and final ex- 
pression certainly must have some philosophical 
explanation. In rough and crude form it may be 
stated thus : music is the art-path to God in whom 
we live and move and have our being. We may get 
to God by many ways — by the silent communion 
of spirit with Spirit, by aspiration, by fidelity of ser- 
vice, but there is no path of expression so open and 
direct as that of music. The common remark that 
music takes us away from ourselves is philosophic- 
ally true. When under its spell we transcend our 
ordinary thought and feeling, and are carried into 
another world ; and if it be sacred music, that world 
is the world of the Spirit. When the spell ends 
and we come back to this present world, we do not 
cease to believe in that into which we were lifted. 
While there, lapped in its harmonies and soaring in 
its adorations, we felt how real that world is, and 
how surely it must at last be eternally realized. To- 
wards that age of adoring harmony humanity is 
struggling, and into that upper world, where the dis- 
cords of time and earth are resolved into tune, every 
earnest soul is steadily pressing. 

Meanwhile we have some foretaste of — 

' ' That undisturbed song of pure concent, 
Aye sung before the sapphire-color' d throne 
To Him that sits thereon, 
With saintly shout, and solemn jubilee ; 



MUSIC AS REVELATION. 339 

Where the bright seraphim, in burning row, 
Their loud uplifted angel-trumpets blow ; 
And the cherubic host, in thousand quires, 
Touch their immortal harps of golden wires ; 
With those just spirits that wear victorious palms, 
Hymns devout and holy psalms 
Singing everlastingly." 



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Rev. A. V. G. Allen. 

Continuity of Christian Thought. 12mo, gilt top, 
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The Andover Review. 

A new Religious and Theological Review, under the edi- 
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Editors of the Andover Review. 

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E. E. Beardsley, D. D. 

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John Brown, B. A. 

John Bunyan : His Life, Times, and Works. With Por- 
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John Bunyan. 

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Dr. Channing's Note-Book. Passages from the Un- 
published Manuscripts of William Ellery Channing. Selected by 
his Granddaughter, Grace Ellery Channing. 16mo, gilt top, 
$1.00. 

Francis J. Child. 

Poems of Religious Sorrow, Comfort, Counsel, and 
Aspiration. Collected and edited by Francis J. Child, Profes- 
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Lydia Maria Child. 

Looking Towards Sunset. A book for those who are 
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James Freeman Clarke, D. D. 

Ten Great Religions. Part I. An Essay in Compara- 
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Ten Great Religions. Part II. A Comparison of ali 
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Common-Sense in Religion. A Series of Essays. 12mo, 

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Benjamin B. Comegys. 

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Rev. M. Creighton. 

History of the Papacy during the Period of the 
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Chinese Buddhism. A volume of Sketches, Historical, 
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A Treatise on the Christian Doctrine of Marriage. 

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George S. Gray. 
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J 



Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 5 

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The Great Debate. 

A Complete Report of the Discussions (on Future 
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F. W. Gunsaulus. 
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George Herbert and Henry Vaughan. 

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Society the Redeemed Form of Man, and the Ear- 
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Oriental Religions, and their Relation to Univer- 
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Lectures, Essays, and Sermons. With a portrait, and 
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Thomas Starr King. 

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Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 7 

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Beckonings for Every Day. A Calendar of Thought. 

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Henry C. Lea. 

Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Christian Church. 

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Samuel Longfellow and Samuel Johnson. 
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Life of the Kev. John McVickar, S. T. D. With por- 
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' Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 9 

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Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, 
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English - Hebrew Lexicon: feeing a complete Verbal 
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The Bible, with Explanatory Notes, Practical 



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Professor C. P. Tiele. 

History of the Egyptian Religion. Translated from 
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Jones Very. 

Poems. With a Memoir by William P. Andrews. 
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E. M. Wherry. 

A Comprehensive Commentary on the Quran : Com- 
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Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney. 

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HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY, 
4 Park Street, Boston; 11 East 17th Street, New York. 



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